NEW DELHI: Pride comes before a fall is a biblical phrase that fits the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) flawed decision-making process in recent times like a glove. It seems the word “consultation” doesn’t exist in the said cricket board’s lexicon.

Instead, even in a multi-team tournament where, in an ideal world, one would expect all participating teams to bounce ideas off one another before arriving at consensus often goes out the window, thanks to BCCI’s intransigence.

For those who are still oblivious to the BCCI’s high-handed behaviour even in this age of the ubiquitous social media, the ongoing Asia Cup jointly hosted by Pakistan and Sri Lanka is an object lesson in how not to organise an event of that magnitude. It’s raining problems of various hues and we would be remiss if we refuse to acknowledge that the BCCI should shoulder much of the blame for how things have unravelled.

The Asia Cup scheduling going awry, even before a ball was bowled, can be ascribed to the BCCI playing hardball with Pakistan, the original and solitary host of the tournament, over allowing Team India to travel across the border owing to the frosty diplomatic relations.

Nobody is putting the BCCI in the dock on that count as the last time India crossed the Radcliffe Line to play cricket was back in July 2008 and the relations between the two went downhill subsequently. The only notable exception to this was when Pakistan travelled to India for a short white-ball series back in 2012. Since then, these two South Asian neighbours have played each other only in ICC events at neutral venues.

Coming back to this year’s Asia Cup, Pakistan threatened to pull out if it was deprived of hosting the event and a few days later even mooted the proposal of a Hybrid Model, where a few of the league matches would be hosted by it, or schedule the entire tournament in the UAE, like how last year’s Asia Cup happened. But it didn’t find many takers with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh not too keen. This riled up the PCB and it issued an ultimatum saying that it would pull out of the event if the Hybrid Model formula it suggested wasn’t taken on board.

The BCCI agreed to Pakistan’s wish but even then things didn’t go swimmingly well as, predictably, rains wreaked havoc in the first week of the tournament with India and Pakistan’s match getting washed out after only one innings had been completed. Even the Super Four match between these two teams had been affected by rain with the match spilling over into reserve day. And even there the ‘reserve day’ was inserted into the schedule at the eleventh hour as a second washout between these two fierce rivals will have drawn the ire of the broadcaster.

And that’s not the end of it as the ‘reserve day’ concept wasn’t applicable to the other Super Four matches, engendering controversy and debate among other teams and rightly so. We will have to wait and watch with bated breath as to what lies in store for the remainder of the tournament. Will rain have the last laugh, akin to the BCCI having the last word? Don’t rule that out.