'Powerful' BCCI's control on Tendulkar images 'final shadow' over Little Master's legacy

The powerful Indian cricket board's control on the distribution of batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar's images has cast a pall on the Little Master's glorious exit from the game, said the Australian media.

The iconic picture, of the hero opening his arms in thanks to his home-town crowd, will not be seen in newspapers as his image is a part of the commercial property of his employer, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and they would be taken and distributed under the BCCI's strict and exclusionary auspices.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, along with the photographs, Tendulkar's eyewitness radio, print reports and television footage, which will be available to paying subscribers in Australia, will be accompanied by BCCI.

The report mentioned that although the BCCI does not actually produce its television broadcasts, it acts as a policeman to protect its broadcast partner after selling the broadcast rights for astronomical sums, maintaining a post-colonial rhetoric of controlling the game.

This will be the final shadow over Tendulkar's legacy: that his last match will be something of a phantom event, visible only to the BCCI's corporate customers and shaped by their selected spin merchants, the report added.