Azharuddin will contest for second term as HCA president, promises to end corruption

Former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin on Tuesday announced that he will stand for the Hyderabad Cricket Association's (HCA) president for a second term and promised to eliminate deep-rooted corruption in the governing body.

Azharuddin announcing his candidature for another term comes a day after Justice (retd) L Nageswara Rao, the Supreme Court-appointed administrator of HCA, barred 57 clubs from contesting or casting their their vote in the HCA elections due to conflict of interest. The elections are likely to be held next month.

HCA has the reputation of being one of the most corrupt cricket associations in the country.

Azharuddin was appointed HCA president in 2019 but his term, which ended with Rao's appointment earlier this year, was impacted by infighting within the HCA Apex Council and court cases.

If elected to power again, the former India skipper has vowed to lift HCA from the shadows of corruption.

"I will fight the election which is expected to be held by September 15. I am very happy this has has happened (bar on clubs) as the situation was prevailing for the last 14 years. The association was not being allowed to work (due to the club nexus). Now the association will improve a lot.

"I am not the owner of any club. As an international player I am allowed to contest the election," Azharuddin told PTI.

The HCA has been awarded three ODI World Cup games and the tournament's two warm-up matches.

Azharuddin's main area of focus would be to make HCA financially self sufficient and not overly reliant on BCCI funding.

"The biggest challenge is to improve the game, improve the facilities. We need to be self sufficient financially. The other associations have lot of funds. Hyderabad has been hand to mouth and has to depend on the BCCI, which has been magnanimous and helped in all ways possible.

"We need to have our own funds to be able to pay to the employees. We have only one ground and we must have more grounds like the other associations.

"We spend lakhs of rupees on renting grounds for local league matches and sometimes those ground are not up to the mark. When the facilities are not good the standard of cricket will go down. So we need to fix that," said the 60-year-old.

The corruption is not only confined to the administrative level, it is entrenched in selection matters too.

"All of it will go away when the association works for the welfare of the game. Two years of my last tenure went away in legal battles.

"Despite the problems I tried my best. It is pretty clear that our performance on the field has not been up to the mark," added Azharuddin. 

Image: AP