May 30, 2000

The fallen heroes of lies and videotape

Last week, at the dinner in honour of Prince Edward hosted by Star TV, I
had point blank questioned Sunil Gavaskar about the match fixing
scandal, tearing the fabric of the cricketing world and whether he believed
the stories doing the media circus. He roundly denied the involvement of
Indian cricketers and having known Sunil for years, I went along with his
line of thinking. When Manoj Prabhakar took his allegations to the `lies
and videotape' stage, most of our ace cricket heroes had mud on their
faces. To be honest, I really don't care that the `men in white' make so
much money, but it does bother me that most of them put self before
country and would even throw a match against our pet peeves, since time
immemorial Pakistan.

I distinctly remember the pride I felt when I went to the Wills launch of
Shankar Mahadevan's `Come on India' pre-World Cup last year. The
Indian team was on stage being spoilt with gold ID bracelets and other
goodies; they seemed to enjoy the attention, the media was spotlighting
them with, they looked a well-scrubbed, clean as a whistle bunch of
sportsmen.

Yet, witnessing the same World Cup finals between Australia and
Pakistan at Lords, one could almost feel the disbelief and dejection that
the Indian win was greeted with. The Pakistanis had just given the game
away and used as we are to a virtual fight to the finish, when the two
Titans of cricket, Indian and Pakistan clash, there was no fire, let alone
brimstone in the Australia-Pakistan match. In the light of the match fixing
allegations, that match alone could have wiped out the bookies, if indeed
the favourites Pakistan had won. That they made it back to Pakistan at
all, even after months, spoke of a certain complicity amongst the `powers
that be' as none of the team was pasted with rotten egg, let alone
lynched. Surprising? No, it was the harbinger of this scandal in more
ways than one. As our cricket heroes are resident Indians, and the period
that covered, the now unravelling `filthy lucre' scandal, was pre-FERA,
they should, by law, be tried under the draconian FERA and perhaps
even for treason against the Nation, if indeed they sold the nation down
the tubes, to mobsters and terrorists manipulating them from Dubai or
Karachi with drug money. What I fail to understand is that, despite the
near `coma inevitia' that even the word `cricket' evokes today, why are
sponsors still promoting advertising via the media, and worse, trivialising
the scandal and abusing our intelligence and sensitively by assailing our
senses with yet another `fallen star' selling some inane product.

Again, the fact that a particular fallen angel hailed from Hyderabad
suddenly seemed to suggest that if `He' was exposed, our New Age
Cyber CM Chandrababu Naidu would pull the virtual reality rug, from
under the Vajpayee Government's feet. Poppy cock! What else will they
think of next? Though I don't approve of Prabhakar and his dotcom co's
hidden video camera stunt, his back was to the wall and if he had waited
for our famed investigating agencies to take their own cool time to sweep
the whole incident under the carpet, he would have lost all. Under the
circumstances, he took the law into his own hands and despite being
cowed earlier, refused to bow under pressure and became a cricket
vigellante instead. Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar I know personally to be
gentlemen, in that they are well- bred and charming when in polite
society, but honour is at stake here and they have to use their
tremendous experience, knowledge and the goodwill they enjoy to help
this ugly chapter in cricket's white flannel past to be addressed and dealt
with lawfully. Manoj, in turn, has to stop this witchhunt and allow the
investigation to progress without under bias and prejudice. The media has
to be as fair and balanced as possible as this scandal has the latent
potential to destroy the dreams of a whole generation of young Indians
and what are we without our dreams and our heroes anyway?

Let us tread carefully down this volatile expose path as the skeletons that
tremble out of this cupboard, could be the graveyard of many an innocent
bystander, perhaps wrongfully indicted. It is my own personal experience
that the slow legal juggernaut ensures the guilty a free reign of terror and
the innocent loses all, while trying to prove his innocence. For all
purposes, he is guilty till proved innocent in the pre-trial that he's been
put through by the media. In the balance, only the truth will suffice and
sure if brought out in the open it will prevail, even a superficial enquiry will
weed out the rot and revive our hopes for an India team which wins,
because it has a collective will that is based on patriotism and national
pride, not the bookies' dirty green backs.

 

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