Vinay Rao
Hyderabad cricket is moving. After years of dysfunction and court battles, there is finally an administration trying to do things differently. That effort is real and deserves acknowledgement.
But ambition without accountability creates its own problems. And the questions piling up around HCA right now — unanswered, unacknowledged, carefully avoided — suggest that while the headlines are changing, the foundations may not be.
Women’s Cricket: A Legacy Being Squandered
Hyderabad has produced two captains of the Indian women’s cricket team. Two. Leaders who carried the national flag, shaped the game at the highest level, and brought Hyderabad its greatest cricketing honour outside men’s cricket.
They are not in any room where decisions are being made. Why?
Neither are any of the experienced women cricketers this city has produced — players who know exactly where the system fails young girls, where talent disappears without support, where promising careers end before they begin.
Instead, power brokers who have never invested a day in women’s cricket continue to control its destiny — or more precisely, ensure it has none. Women’s cricket in Hyderabad has been kept deliberately peripheral because a thriving women’s programme means new stakeholders, new voices and reduced control for those who currently hold it.
Tamil Nadu has a women’s franchise league. Karnataka has structured inter-district pathways. Maharashtra has defined age-group pipelines. Hyderabad — which has contributed more to Indian women’s cricket than most — has nothing. No league. No talent identification. No pathway for a girl from Nizamabad or Adilabad who loves the game and deserves a future in it.
The solution is not complicated. Hand women’s cricket planning to those who built it. Constitute a women’s cricket committee led by former players of repute. Commission a vision document from people who have lived these problems. Ring-fence a budget. Launch a women’s league within the year. The talent exists. The knowledge exists. What is needed is the administrative will to remove the people who are blocking it.
The Right People Are Being Left Outside
HCA has genuine competence within its own ecosystem — former players, experienced administrators, coaches and selectors who know Hyderabad cricket from the inside. Many of them are not in meaningful roles.
Instead, key positions have gravitated towards those with proximity to power rather than demonstrated ability. Well-connected outsiders are shaping decisions that informed insiders would make better. The result is an administration that is increasingly disconnected from ground reality.
The solution is straightforward. Audit current roles against actual competence. Create a transparent process for appointments. Prioritise track record and local knowledge over access and association. HCA does not need to look outside for talent — it needs to stop ignoring the talent it already has.
TG20: Opportunity That Needs Guardrails
TG20 is a genuine opportunity and should be protected as one. But a league without independent oversight and transparent processes does not stay clean for long. The history of Indian cricket administration is a graveyard of well-intentioned leagues that became instruments of the interests they were supposed to displace.
The solution: appoint an independent audit committee with no franchise affiliations. Publish financial reports. Make selection oversight genuinely independent. Do this now — before the first season makes it too complicated to do at all.
Justice Delayed, Justice Denied
A POSH committee was announced months ago. It does not exist in any functional form.
A grievance cell exists. Complaints have been submitted. Nothing has moved.
An Anti-Corruption Unit exists. Not one investigation completed. Not one finding published.
Behind every unacknowledged complaint is a person who trusted the system enough to formally record a grievance — and was repaid with silence. That silence is not inefficiency. It is a message. To the complainant, to the guilty, and to everyone watching.
The administration is led by a judge. Of all people, he understands what unacknowledged complaints do to victims. He knows what impunity does to a system. He knows that justice delayed is justice denied — not as a phrase, but as a daily reality for those still waiting.
The solution is within his authority. Set a 30-day deadline for the POSH committee to be constituted and listed publicly. Direct the grievance cell to publish a status report on every pending complaint. Instruct the ACU to demonstrate — visibly — that it functions. One credible action in each area will restore more confidence than a hundred announcements.
Cheat and Prosper
Age fraud in Hyderabad cricket is documented. Cases have been identified. Names are known. Action was promised.
And now credible questions are being raised about whether players with age fraud on their record have found their way into TG20 franchises — into contracts, into auctions, into the spotlight of a professional league.
If that is true, the message delivered to every honest young cricketer in Telangana is brutal in its simplicity: it did not matter.
The boy who submitted truthful documents. The child from a small town with no connections and no one to fix a certificate. They followed the rules. They watched others cheat. And now they watch those same people collect franchise cheques.
Cheat and prosper. That is the lesson the system is teaching.
A judge administering cricket has a unique responsibility here. The young cricketers of Telangana deserve the same standard of fairness in a cricket office that they would expect in a courtroom. Rewarding documented fraud — even by omission, even by inaction — is not a neutral outcome. It is a verdict on what this system values.
The solution is unambiguous. No player with a pending or proven age fraud case should be eligible for TG20 selection. Publish the list of cases under review. Conclude them with transparent findings. Make the punishment visible enough to be a deterrent. Send the message that this administration intended to send when it promised reform — that the rules mean something, and that they mean the same thing for everyone.
The Window Is Open. For Now.
The next major investigation into HCA is not a distant threat. It is being assembled from the material this administration is generating — through what it does, and through what it is carefully avoiding.
The intent at the top may be genuine. But intent filtered through advisors with agendas, bypassing competent insiders, delivered through accountability bodies that exist only on paper, that intent does not produce reform. It produces the appearance of reform. And Hyderabad cricket has seen enough of that.
The women cricketers are waiting. The honest young players are watching. The complainants are still waiting for a sign that they mattered.
The solutions exist. The authority exists. The moment exists.
What is needed now is the will to act — before the window closes, and before someone else writes the story of why it did.
This article is written in the interest of Hyderabad cricket and the thousands of cricketers — men and women — who deserve a system worthy of their commitment to the game.
