Yet, Prasun Mukherjee put up a brave face today on his first appearance at the Eden Gardens office ever since Bengal were officially relegated in the Ranji Trophy last week.

The CAB president was away at a time when the struggling Bengal unit succumbed to the pressure of holding on to their Elite status, and crashed to a 101-run defeat at the hands of a star-less Andhra Pradesh team. The former supercop was in Melbourne to witness Bengal icon Sourav Ganguly go through the paces in his 100th Test match appearance.

We don’t know if the his presence here at the Eden Gardens during Bengal’s do-or-die Ranji Trophy match would have made a big difference, since the battle was fought out there in the 22 yards. Yet, his absence, made conspicuous by instigations from the detractors of the CAB’s current administration, did leave a bad taste in the mouth, as some top CAB insiders admitted.

Asked about what could have led to last season’s runners-up crashing out of the Elite division, all that the CAB chief said was: “I don’t know. I really don’t what to specifically pin-point as the main reason behind the poor performance of the team this season.”

Mukherjee’s candid admission that he really doesn’t know what led to the disaster comes amidst a spree of charges being hurled at the CAB administration this season. While some critics reckons picking Laxmi Ratan Shukla as skipper and Bharathi Arun as coach was the biggest blunder, many others hold the CAB administration responsible for the downfall. The players, of course, will be relieved to at least hear that the CAB chief isn’t going launch any stern investigation into their poor performance this season. “I am disappointed with what has happened. But that doesn’t mean we should single out the players and the think-tank and put all the blame on them. I am against the idea of starting an inquiry or investigation into why the team didn’t do well this season. Instead, what has happened has happened, and we need to look forward, and hope that we win our way back into the Elite division next season,” Mukherjee said.

Despite making it clear that he won’t take any punitive action against the weaker sections in the Bengal team, the CAB president is planning to have a detailed discussion with the think-tank and the rest of the players, and try and figure out what is going wrong.

Bengal coach Arun is currently in Chennai on a break after his team’s Ranji Trophy campaign ended last week. The former India international is expected to return to the city on January 7, following which the CAB officials will hold detailed discussions with him, looking back at the season.