Indian Cricket team's media manager lands in trouble

What’s the story?

Team India’s media manager Nishant Arora has been the centre of the allegation which states that he ‘leaked’ confidential information to the former BCCI President Anurag Thakur. The incident came to light after an unnamed senior player spoke to the media regarding this.

He said, "Is he (media manager) there to make things easy for us or to irritate us? There is so much of mistrust between players about who is leaking our personal conversation to the outside world. Media manager’s job is to deal with the media but this guy (Arora) is all over the place… inside dressing room, during team celebrations, in team discussions regarding playing eleven etc.”

In case you didn’t know

Nishant Arora has been part of the media industry for over a decade and has players like Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh listed as his clients. He was appointed as the media manager after the 2015 World Cup.

The heart of the story

The England tour of India, which consisted of 5 Tests, 3 ODIs, and 3 T20Is concluded earlier this week. After it ended, a couple of undisclosed senior Indian players have expressed their discomfort to the newspaper. They said that Arora has been over-indulging in activities concerning the dressing room and was passing the same information to the recently sacked BCCI head Anurag Thakur.

Thakur was removed from the post of BCCI President on 2^nd of January this year after he failed to adopt the stringent recommendations made by the Supreme Court appointed Lodha-panel.

Last August, when the Indian team was in Florida, USA to play the West Indian team in two T20 matches, Arora was accused of letting his cousin brother mingle with the players in restricted zones of the team hotel. However, Arora defended by saying that it was a mere coincidence that his cousin booked a room in the same hotel.

Also, it was also learned that a senior player had given a ‘dressing-down’ to Arora after the latter tried to create differences between the player and the head coach Anil Kumble midway in the series.

Parallels from history

This is not the first time Mr.Arora has been part of such allegations. In January last year, the BCCI ombudsman retired Justice AP Shah received a complaint that Arora and his wife were involved in a commercial venture which leads to ‘conflict of interest’.

Sportskeeda’s take

It will be interesting to see what the BCCI decides on the media manager. In the recent past, no manager has been a part of such controversies. He was appointed as the media manager in May 2015 and has been part of two serious allegations. It will not be a surprise if the Lodha panel springs in with new reforms for the background staff and managers of the cricket team.