G'day all...

So finally, we have a decision. So how does the scorecard read?

Kapil Dev: Obligated to end all involvement with cricket, in return for being let off. Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma: Banned for life, meaning that the latter can't even play club cricket in England, and both lose their benevolent fund, benefit games, and other goodies. Jadeja: Banned for five years, which effectively means, bye bye cricket. Manoj Prabhakar: Banned for five years, which means being deprived of various benefits that were due to him. Nayan Mongia: Exonerated -- with the backroom buzz being that this was his quid pro quo for turning approver and spilling the beans in re the likes of Azhar and Jadeja. Dr Ali Irani: Banned for life, duh!

When you look at it overall, that is not too bad. The cleanup is complete. Sure, a section of the readers feel cheated because the guilty have not been hanged, drawn and quartered in public -- but given the state of our laws, I am frankly surprised that the BCCI dared go this far. I mean, what if one or all of the above had actually gone to court and sued the BCCI for depriving them of their sole means of livelihood (and I don't mean by "sole means of livelihood" the right to sell the game, and our emotions, for a few dollars more)?

And that in turn cues applause -- wouldn't you say that Muthiah deserves a standing ovation? I have in the past had occasion to tee off on our esteemed BCCI chief for various acts of omission and comission, but I must confess that in re the issue of match-fixing, he has certainly earned unstinted praise.

Consider the events in sequence:

When he took over, the BCCI was in the firm grip of Jagmohan Dalmiya. It was Dalmiya who decided there was no match-fixing, Dalmiya who pushed through the Chandrachud Commission, Dalmiya who ensured that the entire issue was swept under the carpet. At that point, what Dalmiya wanted, Dalmiya got.

Then came Tehelka. And an enormous media uproar, leading to the intervention of the government (while on the subject of rendering unto Caesar, put your hands together, too, for Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa). When the sports minister convened a meeting of the BCCI top brass, Dalmiya and his faithful factotum, Lele, argued strenuously that the BCCI was an autonomous body, that as such it could not be probed by the CBI, and that the matter should be allowed to rest.

At that meeting, it was Muthiah who stood up to be counted, and insisted on the CBI probe as a means of resolving the issue once for all. And his stance, as BCCI president, backed up Dhindsa's own PoV, and ensured that the CBI inquiry was in fact ordered.

The report came out. And the feline was well and truly out of the bag. Again, the immediate reaction of the Calcutta cabal was to engage in damage control, attack the CBI's credibility, trash the report and hope to raise enough of a noise under which the issue could be buried again.

Again, it was Muthiah who stepped in and got Madhavan to look into the report. Now why would a Madhavan be required, once the CBI had done its stuff? I believe that in the US army, they call it CYA -- cover your, ahem, backside.

You need to remember that the CBI had submitted a report, but NOT filed a case. Again, even the report that was submitted was prepared at the behest of the government, not the BCCI. Legally, the BCCI could take no action whatsoever on the basis of that report, for fear of being sued big time. Hence, the BCCI created some paperwork of its own -- remember that a private body can take action on the basis of an internal inquiry, which is what the Madhavan exercise was all about.

With the paperwork in place, came the next act of the drama. With Kamal Morarka playing the lead role, opening his mouth wide to spout lines scripted elsewhere -- the objective, yet again, being to discredit the CBI, demolish the report, confuse the issues, and create an atmosphere where the BCCI could get away with administering token slaps on the wrists of the tainted players.

Behind the scenes the pressure on the board, from Calcutta, and from politicos of assorted hues, to go easy on the infamous five was mounting by the hour. The first manifestation of that pressure came in Calcutta, when the backroom strategists got the disciplinary committee to stall the announcement -- the idea here being to gain time to manouevre.

The weekend was sort of like a duckpond -- a placid surface, but a lot of frantic paddling beneath the waters. And some surface smoke as well, with Morarka going into top gear with his 'prostitute's diary' bit (strange that nobody thought to ask him this: If the CBI report was akin to a prostitute's diary, how then would he characterise the Madhavan report, commissioned by and paid for by the BCCI, which essentially upheld the CBI's findings?)

Essentially, the battle was for one vote -- which meant that for the first time in his tenure as BCCI Veep, Ram Prasad actually attained a level of importance. Dalmiya and Muthiah both vying for Prasad's vote -- and to his eternal credit, Muthiah won.

Morarka -- who, on the morning of the Calcutta meeting last week, told us that no decision would be taken that day and the disciplinary committee would meet again in Chennai -- discovered a "pressing engagement" -- in other words, a way to save face. And Muthiah pushed it through.

If he never does anything else during his tenure as BCCI chief, he's done plenty these last few days. Isn't it time to give him the round of resounding applause he deserves?

Cheers

Prem

Mail Cricket Editor