The Indian cricket board will "donate" Rs10 crore to the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) to support Indian athletes competing at the Tokyo Olympic Games next month, it was decided at an emergent meeting of its apex council.
The support to the IOA has come as a bit of surprise, particularly considering some lingering doubts about the Olympic Games actually taking place due to Covid-19 situation around the world and its "impending" third wave. Certain people and organisations have called for the postponement/cancellation of the July-August Games, which were scheduled for last year but were postponed due to the pandemic.
Besides, the IOA has four "national sponsors", according to its website. They are MPL Sports Foundation, Inox Group, Nippon Paint, and Edelweiss. And, until recently the IOA had a kit supplier in Li-Ning, a Chinese company, with which it had signed a contract in 2018 that covered the Tokyo Olympics. Reportedly, the Li-Ning contract was worth between Rs5 crore and Rs6 crore.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), according to its 2018-19 balance sheet, is worth Rs14,489.80 crore. Surprisingly, it has still not uploaded the balance sheets of 2017-18 and 2018-19, which should have been done by now, while it is understood that work on the 2019-20 accounts is on.
"The summer Olympics is scheduled to be held in Tokyo from 23 July to 8th August 2021. The BCCI has decided to support Indian athletes in every form and manner it can. In that spirit, based on the request received from the IOA/MYAS [Ministry of sports], the apex council of BCCI has decided to extend support to the IOA and has pledged a monetary gesture of Rs10 crores," the BCCI said in a late evening statement on Sunday.
The BCCI hoped the Indian athletes would "return with more medals than ever before".