Time to exit, Sreeniji

M.L. Kotru
It is dangerous ground that I have chosen to tread on, a risk, all said and done, I have chosen to take. It’s a risk in the sense that the end to the story which I am partially unfolding just now will have its final denouement within the next 24 hours.
It is the story, about the shenanigans of our cricket Broad and its preoccupation with gathering as much of moolah as it can. While the going is good, that is.
For the second time this week, as I write, the Supreme Court of India has heard some horrifying tales told in one of its august chambers. The day’s sitting (Thursday) lasted over two hours as the dramatis personae, through their lawyers, made their submissions, with the judges listening to the parties pleas made on behalf of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and its Chairman Narainswamy Sreenivasan and the petitioner State Association. On the first day of the hearing earlier this week the court had generously given certain options to Sreenivasan & Co, even suggesting the route to avoid a confrontation.
The Board’s lawyers were given a day’s time to talk to the principals and Thursday’s hearing was a continuation of that unfinished business.  The Court, after hearing the Board and the petitioner gave yet another opportunity to the Board to adopt a particular course in order to let the game be played in the spirit it is meant to be. Not my words these, the preceding ones, but first uttered by the country’s first prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru while inaugurating the first Asian Games at new Delhi’s National Stadium : “Play the game in the spirit of the game”, Nehru had said.
Mr. Sreenivasan’s lawyers informed that their client had agreed to step aside from the top job of BCCI, and to have the Chennai Police investigate (as a follow up to the Justice Mudgal Committee’s report) the working of the Indian Premier League (IPL), spot-betting, match-fixing etc. But typically he sought to retain more than a foothold asking that he be allowed to take over as the newly chosen chairman of the International Cricket Council.
This was a virtual repeat of Sreenivasan’s earlier position when the crisis broke out and when he virtually had his way with a compliant BCCI committee letting him step aside briefly (appointing a temporary chief in his absence), ordering an internal “inquiry” which, predictably exonerated Sreenivasan and his Chennai Super Kings, his IPL team and his deeply embroiled son-in-law G. Meiyyapan. The effort did not wash with many, and questions were asked about the legitimacy of the exercise, persuading the Supreme Court finally to appoint the Justice Mudgal three-member inquiry committee.
It’s the Mudgal report which has finally brought the conduct of the IPL into public glare. The report was submitted to the Supreme Court with a separate sealed cover containing some crucial findings of the inquiry. It was the contents of the cover that opened the can of worms, requiring a more extensive look at the entire IPL saga. The contents of the sealed cover were shown to Sreenivasan’s lawyer on Tuesday revealing serious aspects of the Mudgal inquiry.
And today’s detailed annotation of the contents by the petitioner’s advocate Mr. Salve relentlessly focused on the “nauseating” aspects (the court’s description) of the entire IPL episode and Sreenivasan’s role in it. The Indian cricket captain M.S. Dhoni, who skippers the Sreenivasan (India Cements) owned Chennai Super Kings, and his conduct came in for very sharp and critical appraisal. Dhoni, as a Vice-President of the India Cements and captain of the CSK, owned by Sreenivasan, had been economical with truth before the Mudgal Committee, it was pointed out. In fact it looks more like a perjury when the statements by Sreenivasan, his son-in-law G. Meiyyapan and Dhoni are read in the context of the Mudgal findings.
Dhoni, for instance, had told the committee that Meiyyapan was just a cricket enthusiast and not the owner of CSK when the son-in-law was in fact present at every step of the CSK’s existence from bidding for players, to sitting out in the dug-outs and to sharing space with the cricket team. Sunder Raman, the CEO of IPL, was similarly an employee of India Cements etc. All of it, pointing to a conflict of interest.
To go by the accounts from the court room, the alleged guilt of Dhoni and the likes of Meiyyapan was a “real issue” as indicated in the Mudgal report. The integrity and honesty of players had been brought into doubt by the activities of the many malcontents named by Mudgal. It was even suggested that some half a dozen senior Indian players were involved in the IPL related misdeeds.
How could Dhoni, as India Cements vice-president of the CSK-owning company and captain  of the team not be aware of Meiyyapan’s role as the team “principal” or be ignorant about the ‘pass’ he flaunted as the principal giving him access to the team and its dugouts.
Mr. Salve’s was a relentless line of attack which in the light of the alibis like the BCCI not being a profit-making or commercial venture left one unconvinced about the role of Sreenivasan, his son-in-law and the Dhoni-led CSK team which, as it is, has earned most negatives from the Mudgal report.
And obviously even the patient two-judge bench finally felt impelled to ask the BCCI lawyers to reconsider their position against the backdrop of the Mudgal report, its annexures, and the averments made in the court by Mr. Salve. While suggesting that should Sreenivasan meantime step down from the chairmanship of the BCCI, in the interim the former India captain, Sunil Gavaskar be asked to head the BCCI. Significantly, the bench also commended to the Board that as an interim measure the Chennai Super Kings and the Rajasthan Royals teams be kept out of the IPL for the present. (A former Board President had earlier in the week made the sensible suggestion that this year’s IPL, starting in UAE shortly, be suspended. Sharjah and Dubai after all have already earned a dubious distinction as a hot bed of betting, spot-fixing, match-fixing. The current BCCI may find it too difficult to check the triple menace.)
Gavaskar,his stature universally acknowledged, is not a total stranger to the BCCI’s functioning, having served on several BCCI sub-committees. Of course, Sreenivasan’s position would be that the body’s constitution does not permit such temporary arrangements in which case the answer may well be that one of the five Board Vice-President be inducted into the office till a fresh inquiry into the entire gamut of charges and accusations is investigated by the police (not the Board). The curtain was downed the next day (Friday) 16 hours before I penned down this piece. The final verdict, clearly spelt out by the court, appears elsewhere in your today’s paper.

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