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Journalism of Courage
It has been all too facile. The crime-detection, the finger-pointing thanks to selective leaks by the CBI, the interrogation, the cricket control board8217;s no-nonsense approach, the final punishment. There is no doubt that Mohammad Atilde;sup2;f40Atilde;sup3;maine match banaaya8217; Azharuddin deserved a life ban. Has the cricket matchfixing saga come to a satisfactory conclusion? Is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Are there more people whose antecedents need to be looked at 8212; Board officials, government officials, for instance?
The Board must choose between incompetence and complicity 8212; either it did not know what was happening, or it knew but chose to keep quiet. Its secretary, for instance, reacted spontaneously to the first reports of matchfixing by claiming such things didn8217;t exist in India, and could never exist. I don8217;t know what he thinks now, but he is the master of the denial, and in any case it doesn8217;t matter what he thinks. The Board president has reacted quickly enough.
For years, we have known that players are merely pawns in the hands of the cricket Board. Various captains have often said this. Someone like Dilip Vengsarkar, in his time the best batsman in the world, once confessed he was never confident of playing two Test matches in a row. If that was his fate, what of lesser players? Sunil Gavaskar, once dropped from a one-day squad, admitted he felt shattered. Kapil Dev missed only one Test in his entire career 8212; he was dropped. He was devastated.
Millions might cheer and wave at our ample stadiums, but Indian cricketers know that a few men who may or may not have played at all in the board room, who go unrecognised by the public, hold the real power. It is only logical to presume, therefore, that this collection of movers and shakers might have a bigger role to play in the scandal than the CBI has given them credit for. Sure, Azharuddin was involved, but what about Board officials? Manoj Prabhakar has swung between the sublime and the ridiculous so often, it is understandable if no one is willing to listen to him. But in his own cock-eyed way he was right the first time, and there is no immediate reason to doubt his word now when he says Board officials are involved in matchfixing, and he knows their names. There is a certain logic to this that needs to be followed up. Somehow it is difficult to believe that the buck stopped with Azharuddin. It is more realistic to believe there were people higher in the pecking order, in the administration, maybeeven in the government, who worked under the cloak of anonymity.
It might be a mistake to accept that the story has run itself out. And dangerous too. After all, what do we have now: A confession from Azharuddin who claims to have fixed a couple of matches, and the guilt-by-association of men like Ajay Sharma, Manoj Prabhakar and Ajay Jadeja. And the involvement of someone like Ali Irani whose long association with Indian teams could only have come about through some official sanction. His PR was always excellent, which threw a question mark over his professional competence. Now we know the role he played.
Azharuddin has confessed to fixing just two or three matches 8212; if the investigations stop here, it would be admitting that only two or three matches were fixed among the hundreds played by India. That doesn8217;t make sense at all. Why would matchfixers stop at that number? And since Azharuddin has confessed, why would he not go the whole hog? As I have said before in this context, you cannot be a little pregnant.
Ajay Jadeja has been denying any connection with matchfixing. It was Azharuddin who put the finger on him. It is usually good policy to believe everything a man says when he is confessing, but Jadeja says Azhar is wrong. In the Indian context, stout denial is a sound policy, especially since it is unlikely that the CBI8217;s case will stand up in a court of law. But then the Board of Control for Cricket in India isn8217;t particularly worried about that. Its appeal is to a higher court, it says 8212; that of the fans. The concession it has made, that those charged have the right to appeal, is a hollow one since 28 of the 30-member general body were for punishing the players.
That is unusual unanimity or close enough to one where the Board is concerned. It is hard to shake off the feeling that the Board would rather make a meal of punishing the players. By doing that it can deflect the line of inquiry against itself.
One way forward would be to get journalists involved. The Chandrachud Commission which gave everybody a clean chit has been shown up to be a joke. The journalists who were called there saw it as a social occasion. But over the years, Board officials have let slip wisely or unwisely that they know more than they let on. If journalists who have accompanied Indian teams care to throw their minds back, they will remember occasions when officials have made either an innocent remark or an outrageous claim quot;India will lose this match by four wicketsquot; that have subsequently proved to be true.
At the time, these were passed off as jokes, but in the light of what we know today, it wasn8217;t prescience so much as definite knowledge. I don8217;t think the Board can claim to be innocent 8212; many in the Board knew exactly what was happening. What needs to be ascertained is whether knowledge means involvement or not.
The CBI, which has worked with great alacrity in making a case against the players, must now be directed to look into the behaviour of officials too. Otherwise we would simply have struck at a branch or two of the tree of corruption while leaving the root intact, and ready to continue its dirty work after a short while. Too much is at stake here.
The players were probably guilty, but clearly they cannot be the only ones involved. To say that it8217;s all over now, let8217;s get on with the game, would be a mistake. The worst is yet to come.
It is hard to shake off the feeling that the BCCI would rather make a meal of punishing the players. By doing that it can deflect the line of inquiry against itself.
