Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British, Ashis Nandy wrote long ago.

On the lazy, balmy pre-winter weekend morning of November 17, as England batsmen meander from nowhere to deeper into nowhere in the first session, one feels Wikipedia, which describes Nandy as “Indian political psychologist, a social theorist, and a contemporary cultural and political critic”, should as well have called him a futurist. His lines appeared in the book ‘Tao of Cricket’ back in 1989, when cricket wasn’t still the sole property of the BCCI.

It now is.

Lazying around in office on the same lazy, balmy pre-winter weekend morning, minutes after the England batsmen had begun their studied and grim-faced march back to the dressing room at Motera in Ahmedabad, almost as if by rote, one came across a lovely link posted by a former colleague on Facebook, that mother of all tools to kill time while appearing to act busy. It was the London Telegraph, telling its readers the visual tale (see here) of the first India-England Test that began on November 15. Nothing unusual, save the small fact that it was bizarre; those images, that is: a series of line drawings etching out what was happening out there on the field, a frame full of sarcasm followed by 16 similar frames.

“India v England, first Test: in the only pictures available”, said the headline.

It was, of course, an allusion to the BCCI’s honourable act of barring certain agency photographers, including Getty Images, that mother of all archive images source for sports journalists, from covering the Test series. In protest, international agencies like Reuters, AP and AFP said they, too, would not cover the match.The BCCI thought (an act it does a little too often for anyone’s benefit) it has a point, like it always believes.

“The board has a policy not to accredit photo syndication services like Getty Images and other similar foreign and domestic agencies," BCCI’s media manager Devendra Prabhudesa had told the media before the Motera match got under way.

Instead, the board gave foreign papers, and agencies put under the stinking blanket of ban, the option of using images from its own website. That no one might want to do so, for issues related to quality, among others, is a minor legal knot for the board’s head honchos.

But what, pray, is the board trying to achieve with this? Aside from making the already irate players and foreign media, vexed already with the Indian board’s bureaucratic bandobast, further livid? It is no one’s argument that the BCCI should go out of its way to accommodate the burra sahibs — in fact some senior cricket journalists who have covered matches across the globe said there’s nothing wrong in BCCI safeguarding its business by keeping out the likes of Getty, who make money from the images, and reminded that most EPL football clubs do the same with broadcast rights.

Reminding that Cricket Australia had tried to put up restrictions for even agency photographers a few years ago before backing off in the face of criticism, one senior journalist said Indian broadcasters are also expected to pay up at, say, Lord’s, where commentators are allotted a 2x2 room and expected to brave it out on their own.  "The English media is up in arms against BCCI because they are not used to hearing a no,” as he put it.

But then, who puts a lid on BCCI’s penchant for saying no? If the board thinks it owns Indian cricket and -- by virtue of the money generated -- the game itself, what stops its autocratic satraps from extending the ban to news agency photographers tomorrow? They can all be asked to fetch images from BCCI’s pool. And put a bar on newspaper or magazine photographers the day after, using the same, ahem, logic?

Or, this sounds scary but is merely an extension of the same line of argument, restrict even reporters covering matches on the pretext that their reportage is too disparaging for Indian cricket so they should cut-and-paste from the BCCI's hired writers on its website?

What’s scarier is that it’s not like this hasn’t happened in the past. It isn’t discovering oil to come across cricket correspondents who have been banned by some state association or the other since they have been critics of the way the officials function. One senior cricket writer from TOI-Mumbai in fact gave examples of threatening emails he had received from Lalit Modi, BCCI’s internal genius turned estranged bedfellow, asking the board not to allow the journalist inside a cricket stadium.

Besides, TOI correspondents were purportedly banned from covering cricket in Chennai’s MA Chidambaram stadium after the paper went hammer and tongs against certain officials.

While the ban on Getty Images, and the consequent boycott by other international news agencies, of the Motera Test match could well be a minor issue--a bad spell by a bowler involving a few no-balls and wides--it’s a dangerous precedent the BCCI is showing.

What the decision has done is open a can of worms: who owns Indian cricket? Can an average fan be asked not to take cameras and phones to the stands while watching the match, lest s/he ‘shoots’ copyrighted photos with that treacherous phone-cam?

Is BCCI only a business entity, broadcaster and regulator rolled into one, and gradually shaved off its principal role function as administrator of a popular game bankrolled by the paying public?