IDBI Federal Life Insurance’s CEO Vighnesh Shahne has told the Times of India that he will not be involved in any future endeavour with the Mumbai Cricket Association(MCA). A few days ago Shahane’s company that was in partnership with the MCA to run a Bowling Foundation ended its ties with the association on a bitter note. The company had given a cash award of Rs 20 lakh to the Mumbai Under-23 team after they won the Col CK Nayudu Trophy last season. The company also rewarded Balvinder Sandhu, Shardul Thakur, Dhawal Kulkarni and Shreyas Iyer with Rs 1 lakh after their brilliant performance in Mumbai’s victorious Ranji Trophy campaign last season.
Making the announcement, Shahane said that they would not be able to give such rewards this time.
“We’re terminating the sponsorship of the DY Patil Twenty20 tournament (which was started in the last edition of the event) too. Unfortunately , we won’t be able to give similar awards this time,” said Shahane.
Shahane, who represented Mumbai in five first-class matches, cited the MCA officials’ reluctance to resolve the on-going issue as one of the reasons to end the partnership.
“Their officials just shot off a letter to me. There was no attempt on their part to resolve the issues across the table, call me for a meeting or anything. The language of their letter, that they weren’t `happy’ confused me whether I’m a sponsor, or they’re paying me the money ,” Shahane said.
“We are one of the few sponsors who invest crores at the grassroots level, where you hardly get much in return. I started this scheme from Mumbai purely because I played my cricket here. We put in so much money -sending boys for exposure trips to England and Australia, hiring Australian legend Jeff Thomson as the head coach, and roping in all top coaches for the boys, who were gaining so much, but suddenly they’ve a problem with EIC, and it all ends. They can’t tell me which agency I’m supposed to hire or not hire. I can’t look after the day-to-day working of the Foundation, for which I trusted EIC,” he explained.
IDBI hired EIC or Excellence In Cricket to look after the implementation of the bowling scheme. The MCA officials had some issues with those who were associated with the EIC and so they asked Shahane to deal with them directly.
However, the MCA’s take on the issue did not go down too well with Shahane and he said : ” A couple of friends (who’re sponsors as well), were shocked to hear what I went through. I’m not going to refer anyone (sponsor) to the MCA now. It isn’t worth it. I’m getting good feelers from the other associations about putting up the Bowling Foundation there. Yesterday , I spoke to Sourav Ganguly (currently CAB president), and I know Brijesh Patel (secretary, KSCA). Both are professional and respectful towards you as a sponsor. Brijesh has provided us with all the facilities possible to run our Foundation in Bangalore.”
However, the MCA refused to take the blame over the issue.” After we wrote a letter to them, they responded by saying that they were withdrawing the sponsorship. Even they could’ve offered to thrash out the issues,” MCA secretary Unmesh Khanvilkar said.