26 May 2013
On Saturday morning, while watching my daughter go through her swing-slide-running-helter-skelter routine, I also kept an eye on three young boys playing with a tennis ball. They were using their palms to hit the ball, and each of them was trying to imitate a certain bowler's action. The skinniest was trying to replicate Ravi Rampaul's bustling approach, while the stockier one went into all sorts of contortions in a bid to sling it like Shaun Tait.While an older generation debates spot-fixing and keeps its eyes on the police investigations in Mumbai and Delhi, these kids play on. No bookies have got to them yet, and they worry not so much about the deliberate no-ball as about it disappearing over the compound wall and out of reach.
How do you tell those boys that much of what they've watched over the past six weeks may have been a sham, orchestrated by cheats on the field, in the dug-out and elsewhere? How do you tell them that some of their heroes don't love the game like they do, that they hold it in enough contempt to betray it?
"The truth always sets you free, that's what I believe," said Rahul Dravid after the end of Rajasthan Royals' season, when asked what he thought could be done to win back the faith of fans. "I really hope that we find out the truth and get to the bottom of it, whatever it is and however painful it may be."
His should have been one of many voices trying to make sense of a story that is as demoralising to most of the game's followers as the match-fixing scandal of 2000. Instead, he has been like a lone swallow of summer. Everyone else is silent, or dealing in empty platitudes - "more good men than bad". Instead of those best qualified to comment on the crisis, we're subjected to lectures on morality from politicians, the biggest scamsters in a country that ranks a dismal 94th in the Corruption Perception Index.
If anything, the current fiasco is worse, simply because cricket is so much bigger than it was in 2000. Back then, cricket didn't command 12 hours or more on news channels. In 2000, the chances of India being captained by a Jharkhand player were remote. And if you'd said that a fast bowler from Kerala would bowl India to a first Test win in South Africa, you might have had men in white coats come after you.
What 2000 did was kill our naiveté, and inject a healthy dose of cynicism. That was very much in evidence the other night as Rajasthan prevailed in the Eliminator in Delhi. Dravid opened the bowling with Vikramjeet Malik, who had played one game all season. Brad Hodge, the most prolific run-getter in the format, was kept back at No.7. Had either move backfired, with three Rajasthan players in police custody, you can only imagine how far the whispers would have gone.
After the game, Dravid compared the week that had gone before to bereavement. As for what the sport's other titans thought, your guess is as good as mine. So far, we have yet to hear anything beyond the banal. One of the commentators told me how much his faith had been shaken by the week's events. Another asked if Wisden would consider expunging the records of those implicated. Neither, however, has come out with anything of substance in public.
It's not enough to say that you're an employee bound by a contract who's just doing a job. That's a copout. No one expects anything from SET Max, who are to quality broadcasting what Milli Vanilli were to music. But we do expect something from the more respected names in the game.
At times like this, you can't be thinking of contracts, present or future. Right now, my loyalty cannot be to Bloomsbury, publishers of Wisden, or to FidelisWorld, who brought the brand to India. My duty is to take a stand on behalf of the hundreds of thousands who log in to this site, a number that's grown steadily. We owe them the true picture.
The media itself has been facing a conflict-of-interest situation for a while now. In a sense, we've become like embedded journalists in wartime. The boards or the ICC control our access to events. Without that access, we can't bring you the real story. Often times, if you go too close to the truth, that access is taken away from you. That doesn't mean, however, that you stop trying.
