At last, we can get back to life as we know it. The curtain came down on cricket’s longest-running drama when the BCCI announced this evening that India’s top players, led by Saurav Ganguly, would be going to Colombo, on their terms, and the BCCI’s. After two hours of hectic global teleconferencing, a beaming Jagmohan Dalmiya broke the glad tidings to the media. ‘‘We are quite happy about it. A full-strength squad will represent India in the tournament’’, he said, adding that the ICC will, on the morrow, send the players a model contract form. Dalmiya had every reason to beam; the cloud that had been hovering overhead since the controversy broke, and which had seen him play an unusually low-key role, cleared today. Indeed, it may well be that the master strategist had played his cards correctly all along. Even as the climax got unbearable, Dalmiya, it seemed, knew which pieces of the puzzle he had and which would come his way. It seemed madness at first — taking on his own players with greater ferocity that his old sparring partner the ICC. Until he closed out a deal which looked improbable till only a few minutes before he managed it. In the end it was all about the global reach of the Indian players, more so the Indian money. And Dalmiya kept hammering it in, day after day, hour after hour, minute after every tense minute on Monday. Look at what the Indian players gained out of the MoU: the contracts were reduced to mere paper, amended exclusively for them. And, just in case a sponsor feels wronged, the ICC will foot the bill. The Indians can meanwhile go to Sri Lanka and do what they do best. In the process, the ICC has had to buckle down not once but twice in less than a week and it seems now both the BCCI and the players knew who would blink first. By their adamant posture — ‘‘We will not sign’’ — the players softened up the ICC, as it was forced to delete/alter the contentious clauses. And by ‘daring’ the BCCI today — a person central to the deal says it was a pre-planned move by the players and BCCI — the players only had the ICC on their knees: sources involved in the negotiations say one of the possibilities discussed was cancelling the Champions Trophy. By agreeing to the Indian demands of relaxing clauses without asking for compensation and agreeing to renegotiate the terms for World Cup and its future tournaments, the ICC has conceded its contracts were unfair and one-sided. Now if there is going to be a review of all this, credit goes to India Inc. The 14-member team includes Sachin, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, Dinesh Mongia, Mohd Kaif, Yuvraj Singh, Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, V V S Laxman, J P Yadav, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.
