There is something of Merlin the magician to Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Stretching the legend further, Dhoni is probably Merlin and King Arthur rolled into one for the Team India skipper is no adviser as he is the definitive decision maker.

I never had more fun on tours than the ones on which Dicky Rutnagur was around. As a drinking companion, I dreaded keeping up with him in the evenings. But those long evenings were so instructive, so fascinating in its detail of cricket and cricketers past, that I never missed one.

Two great factors have helped Team India to become the hottest favourite for the Champions Trophy title.

A major plan is afoot to clean up the game of cricket, particularly its commercial arm IPL.

Riding roughshod over a largely muted and scattered opposition, BCCI president N.

Sunday might be his last day as elected president of BCCI. Like Napoleon being sent finally to exile in Saint Helena, Srinivasan might be banished and forcefully confined to affairs of the TNCA in his personal island of cricket governance in which he might still command a majority for life because he has done so many favours to that electorate of club and district secretaries.

Indian cricket is in the throes of its gravest crisis yet. The betting and fixing scandals go far beyond the first wave that came up in the ‘90s to be followed by the Hansie Cronje upheaval that had several repercussions for Indian cricketers.

BCCI president N. Srinivasan has brazenly refused to step down in the wake of the arrest of his son-in-law, Chennai Super Kings boss Gurunath Meiyappan. He said he would not be “bulldozed or railroaded” by anyone into resigning and that the “law would take its course”. It is typical of the man who must now be made to stand down by board members, many of whom have already made this clear to him.

His son-in-law could well turn out to be the Achilles Heel of Indian cricket czar N. Srinivasan. Given his history, the tangle would have been a minimal stumbling block if Gurunath Meiyyapan had not been linked so deeply with the Bollywood ‘fixer’ Vindoo.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India may have lost a valuable opportunity to hold a check on its players had it accepted the Wada (World Anti-Doping Agency) code that deals with drugs, both performance-enhancing and recreational, in sport.