Now Reading: Jay Shah drove BCCI Centre of Excellence from barren 40 acres
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Jay Shah drove BCCI Centre of Excellence from barren 40 acres
As the BCCI Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru nears its second anniversary, former secretary Jay Shah has been credited with pushing the project from a barren 40-acre plot. Current BCCI secretary…
The Story in Brief
As the BCCI Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru nears its second anniversary, former secretary Jay Shah has been credited with pushing the project from a barren 40-acre plot. Current BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said Shah aligned the Apex Council and cleared legal hurdles to start construction on February 14, 2022. Regularising the idle land was the chief challenge, with many parties trying to reclaim it.
CoE head VVS Laxman recalled moving to Bengaluru in December 2021 after Shah and then BCCI president Sourav Ganguly asked him to ensure continuity following Rahul Dravid's appointment as India head coach. Laxman said Shah attended meetings with architects and L&T to oversee every detail. The CoE became fully operational in November 2024.
The Indian Opinion
Indian cricket loves to credit a single leader for every success, but the CoE story is more mundane: it took land regularisation, contractor coordination, and a former cricketer uprooting his life. The narrative that one man's 'vision' built a facility ignores the dozens of bureaucrats, engineers, and coaches who did the actual work. A fair test will be how the CoE performs after Shah's attention shifts to the ICC. Can the system sustain itself without a hands-on secretary?
Sources (3): rediff.com, indiatvnews.com, timesofindia.indiatimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the 3 sources linked above.
Updated: this story now draws on 3 sources.
