It is a lazy winter afternoon; the drama is unfolding near the main Ferozshah Kotla ground, the nerve-centre of cricket in Delhi. About 800 children have assembled at Kotla Number 2, in the hope that they may find a place in Delhi’s under-16 team.

One parent on the ground is former captain Bishen Singh Bedi. A sample of his conversation with Delhi and Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) honcho Sunil Dev that evening: “Why was my son asked to get a ration card before the trials. Has he come here to buy atta for you or to play cricket?” Laughter all round but Bedi, like most of the parents on the ground, is annoyed and angry. “Why can’t you have a tournament for these boys so that selection becomes easy?” he hurls this and other questions at the increasingly uncomfortable Dev.

V K Ramaswamy, the distinguished Indian umpire, who is also on the ICC panel is present in the room, as are a few journalists and officials. A bit puzzled at the whole exercise, he asks: “How will you select the team?” Before Dev can say anything a journalist retorts: “They first select the team and then hold the trials.”

After a few days the team is announced. The DDCA must have come under so much pressure -- reportedly from ministers, bureaucrats, police officials and even journalists -- that they select a team of not 14 or 15, as is the practice, but of 20 children! And, so as not to displease a number of others, they also announce a 14-member team of standbys.

The story does not end here: It takes an interesting turn. Bedi is so incensed by the farcical trials that he files his nomination papers for presidentship in the forthcoming Association elections. This creates a stir, though Bedi knows that in the proxies-dominated elections, he has no chance of getting more than a handful of votes.

A few days later Bedi lines up a few former Test cricketers - Maninder Singh, Chetan Sharma, Prakash Bhandari - and a number of first class stalwarts, including Akash Lal and Rajinderpal, to denounce the DDCA, and its system of proxy voting. But the election results show that the proxy system is alive and kicking. BCCI Vice-President C K Khanna, is still the biggest holder of proxies, and Dev has bought his truce with Khanna.

Bedi’s call for a change gives him just 93 votes against 2,000 odd polled by the winner, Ram Babu Gupta. Bedi is now making an effort to get all former Test cricketers on one platform to air the grievances of their fellow players playing at the domestic level.

With Prakash Bhandari, the all-rounder who played three Tests for India in the ‘50s, as its founder-chairman, the association has yet to be officially launched, but has already talked to players like “Dilip Vengsarkar in the West, Arun Lal in the East and Gundappa Vishwanath in the South.” According to Bedi, Kapil Dev too has given his consent to this move.

Illustration by Siddhartha Mitra