The BCCIs investigation is only a smokescreen to hide its inaction No official,either from the BCCI or IPL,has quit. Nor has the Indian board gone by the book and scrapped tainted teams. The BCCIs only acknowledgement of the spot-fixing scandal has been to announce an internal probe. The last few days have seen a confused BCCI temper the mandate and the composition of the commission. Not stopping there,BCCI president N. Srinivasan has promised to stay away from the working of the commission and IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla has stressed the Board would not even be vetting the findings but implementing the recommendation straight away. But with police networks of several states investigating the same case,isnt the BCCI fussing over a needless exercise? At the core of the probe is a simple question: was Gurunath Meiyappan an important member in the Chennai Super Kings setup? Its a no-brainer. And it wouldnt need two retired judges and a BCCI insider (they are part of the reconstituted panel) to answer it. Anyone with a passing interest in the IPL knows the officious-looking man with glasses,seen at auctions and in the dug-out,was an important member of Team Chennai. Even if he was a mere enthusiast,and not the team principal or owner as Srinivasan insists while referring to his son-in-law,Meiyappan was certainly someone with inside knowledge of the team. His family connections made him an important member of the bench,whom coaches and players would have confided in. Once he was arrested for being in constant touch with a dubious betting syndicate,all the BCCI needed to do was suspend the team from the league and wait for the courts verdict. In the name of following procedure,the Board has raised a smokescreen to hide its inaction. By ordering a probe,it has tried to buy time,divert attention and take the pressure away from calls of resignation. More than a decade ago,the BCCI had set up a commission to probe the infamous match-fixing scandal of the 1990s. By no stretch of the imagination did it turn out to be a ground-breaking search that exposed crickets underbelly. Even if the members of the present commission intend to reach the bottom of the case,do they have the resources for an honest scrutiny? In the BCCIs corridors of power,tokenism trumps activism in times of crisis.
