Last Monday, April 27, Times Now carried promos of what was to be a prime-time debate on the ongoing battle between the two camps in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Called “The War in BCCI: Thakur vs Srinivasan”, it appeared it would be a debate to discuss things in the wake of BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur sending an explosive letter to former president N Srinivasan.

The channel even aired a blueprint of what the debate was going to be like with a reaction from Thakur.

Curiously, though, the actual debate wasn’t aired at all. The only prime-time debate of the evening was on net neutrality, after which the channel went back to the coverage of the Nepal earthquake.

While it is certainly the channel’s editorial prerogative to decide on the airtime it wants to give to a certain story, the cancellation of a debate on what was touted as the “biggest cricket board war”, without any explanation at all comes across as odd. Particularly, on a day when there was no other breaking development as such.

The not-so-secret internal feud in the BCCI spilled out when a photo of Thakur with a suspected bookie got leaked ahead of a BCCI working committee meeting on Srinivisan’s contentious Chennai Super Kings de-merger.  The International Cricket Council, the president of which is Srinivasan, had then given Thakur an “advisory” on his alleged connection with the bookie. In response, Thankur shot off a strong-worded letter, in which he claimed Srinivasan was using his position as the president of ICC to spread misinformation.

Here is the background. Srinivasan, who was forced to resign from the BCCI, had reportedly tried to lobby with Sharad Pawar, an influential man in the world of Indian cricket, to help him make his way back to the BCCI.  This, according to the report, didn’t go down too well with Arun Jaitley, another important voice in Indian cricket.

Speaking to Newslaundry, former cricketer and BJP MP Kirti Azad questioned why the story was dropped. “There were no new major developments in Nepal, or for that matter, anywhere else, so why drop the story without any intimation”. Azad suspected that Times Now dropped the debate under Jaitley’s pressure, as Azad claimed it could have been embarrassing for Thakur. Azad contended that Indian cricket was being ruined by a cozy club of men who didn’t care about the welfare of the sport.

But is it really a case of two cozy clubs out to get each other? And, is the media being caught in their cross hairs?

Arnab Goswami, Editor-in-Chief of Times Now didn’t respond to our messages requesting Times Now’s version on the sequence of events.  Hector Kenneth, Vice-President News Operations and second-in-command at Times Now, told Newslaundry that he was not the right person to speak on it.

The story will be updated as and when we receive a response from Times Now.