5 times Delhi cricket made headlines for controversies ft. Ayush Badoni in 2024
The Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA), which is one of the premier state cricket associations in the country by virtue of representing the capital city and its surrounding districts, has rarely been short of controversies.
This time, it finds itself in the nation's attention owing to its mistreatment of star batter Ayush Badoni, who has a good reputation among the national selectors.
The DDCA has been one of the worst faction-ridden associations in the country, and quite regularly, one sees vested interests play a role in dragging it to the dirt over improprieties of all kinds.
In this listicle, we bring to you five occasions in which Delhi cricket made headlines for controversies:
#1 Exclusion of Ayush Badoni
The Ayush Badoni saga is the latest of the controversies that Delhi cricket has found itself embroiled in. The 24-year-old was asked to stay back at the team hotel by the powers-that-be, allegedly to teach him a lesson.
Badoni, who has provided an oasis of stability for Delhi in this rather poor season of theirs, has not been in the best of form in general. However, he scored 41 in their previous game against Madhya Pradesh, and one could foresee a change in fortunes for him.
Keeping him out of the side did not help Delhi much, as they crumbled to 147 against Uttarakhand in Mohali.
#2 Bishan Singh Bedi's famous letter
The late Bishan Singh Bedi, who was one of the most outspoken and fair cricketers in the country, wrote to the then-president of the DDCA, Rohan Jaitley, requesting to remove his (Bedi's) name from a stand at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium.
Bedi took this momentous decision after the DDCA decided to install a statue of the former DDCA president and Jaitley's father, Arun, under whose stewardship the association saw dubious decisions and misappropriation of funds.
In his letter, Bedi said that he refused to be associated with DDCA anymore and renounced his lifetime membership as well.
#3 Gagan Khoda's allegations
Former national selector Gagan Khoda, who was named Delhi's senior selector for the 2022–23 domestic season, had a war of words with fellow selector Mayank Sidhana over the consideration of a few candidates in the U-25 team.
Sidhana walked out of the meeting between the two after he decreed that Khoda and Anil Bharadwaj, the third selector, had pushed for the selection of a few players with questionable credentials. Khoda had earlier said that Sidhana was pushing for 'dubious candidates.'
#4 The selection of Sarthak Ranjan
The Delhi selectors drew a lot of flak in 2018 when they selected then-Bihar MP Pappu Yadav's son, Sarthak Ranjan, for the team set to compete in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.
This was done even as the highest scorer of the Under-23s, Himmat Singh, was kept in the reserves. To be sure, Sarthak had not played a single match that season and only managed to get scores of 5, 3, and 2 in the previous edition of the SMAT.
Ranjan's father, Pappu Yadav (Rajesh Ranjan), is a former Rashtriya Janata Dal politician, and his mother, Ranjeet Ranjan, was a former Congress MP.
#5 Sexual harassment allegations against Rohan Jaitley
The DDCA president Rohan Jaitley, son of the former president of the association and Union minister Arun, was accused of sexual harassment and financial impropriety by a woman known to him in 2023.
In her complaint to top officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the woman detailed how the DDCA chief misused his official position to seek sexual and financial favors. A second case was filed against Jaitley soon; this came from a model in Mumbai alleging the same.