Former president Inderjit Singh Bindra continued his fight against the autocratic ways in which the Board of Control for Cricket in India functions in his latest blog on Sunday, saying N. Srinivasan and interim chief Jagmohan Dalmiya will mess up the sport in the country.
“Between Srini and Jaggu, they are going to mess up Indian cricket, if they have not done it already,” the Punjab Cricket Association president wrote in his latest blog.
Bindra has been vehemently opposing the Board’s stance in meetings and through his blogs ever since the spot-fixing scandal came to light, but has not been able to garner enough support from members within the board. “I only feel sad and sorry for the board members who are taking all this nonsense lying down without even a whisper of a protest,” he said.
The former IAS officer pointed out that the two-member probe set up by the board in the betting row, involving two IPL team owners, is handicapped with BCCI’s terms and conditions, where the accused even got their choice of judges for the panel.
“I don’t want to pat myself for saying — the moment the two-man panel was set up to probe the involvement of board president Narayanswamy Srinivasan in his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan’s alleged betting and spot-fixing in the IPL — that the whole exercise is a sham and that the legal luminaries in the board have redrafted the jurisprudence by giving the accused the right to choose not only the court in which they want the case heard but also the choice of the judges!”
Bindra also raised questions about the effect that the report will have, terming BCCI’s reference points in the probe ‘heavily loaded in favour of the accused’.
“What will be the legal sanctity of the panel’s report? Nothing. It will simply be filed and the board will selectively accept parts of it that suits it and eventually exonerate the presiding deity of the Mutt, that is the ‘stepped-aside board chief’ with the ‘high priest’ (Jaggu Dalmiya) propitiating the last rites.”
Bindra also quoted gist of a conversation between Justice Jayaram Chouta, one of the probe panel members, and Mahendra Mapagunaratne, a Sri Lankan Canadian activist promoting clean cricket, which raises doubts about the whole exercise.
Chouta had indicated that they are probing “a private matter between the BCCI and two IPL franchises and that there is no access for either the media or public to provide evidence. The probe will depend on whatever evidence is presented by BCCI and no one else!”