Life's like that!

Even by the standards of his terrible job, the day had been bad.

It had started with his car breaking down on the way to work. It was then he realized that his phone battery was also dead. By the time he finally managed to get in to work, it was as if all hell had broken loose. 

A critical server had crashed. Thanks to his company’s belt-tightening efforts, the backup server, never used operationally until now, was nowhere close to being capable of handling the load now expected of it, rendering it practically unusable. His colleague had decided to call in sick that day – leaving him now to deal with the problem. In other words, fix it.

John, his boss, was in no mood for explanations. “Fix it – then we’ll talk!” he barked at Mike.

Mike didn’t say a word. Getting straight down to business, two hours later, after a lot of searching and testing and rebooting,  voila – the server was up and running again. They were back in business.

“John's cabin. NOW.” came the terse message from John’s secretary.

“It is ok now, John” Mike said, as he entered John's cabin.

“What’s ok? Four hours! FOUR hours we’ve lost today. Do you have ANY idea what that means? Do you know how many orders we’ve lost? How many customers we may have lost? Do you know how difficult it is to retain ONE customer nowadays?”

“Sorry...I did the best I could. It was quite a complicated problem. The system directory…”

“Spare me the details. You walk in one hour late, we can’t get you on the phone – who do you think you are?”

“Sorry, my car broke down. And my phone died too. I didn’t know Jim wouldn’t be in today. Anyway, it’s working now. We really should be getting a faster backup server, John”.

“Sure, why don’t we just get it out of your salary?”

Mike went silent.

“What are you doing still standing here? Have you finished that network configuration schematic that I asked you to work on? I want to see it by end of day today on my desk.”

Mike returned to his desk. The day was only half over but he was already feeling very tired. Oh, how he hated this job! But he needed it. He needed the money. Not for himself, but for his daughter.

Mira. His ten-year old. She’d been five when her mother had died in a fire accident in front of her eyes. She hadn’t spoken a word since.

He’d shown her to every doctor he could. “It’s a trauma case. We can try – but no guarantees”.

 And they’d tried. Without result.

He’d finally taken her to Chicago. A friend had suggested this speciality clinic there. Not very well-known but apparently it had shown some good results for similar cases. It was over a thousand miles away – but he was willing to try ANYTHING.

 “No guarantees, Mr. Wilson” the doctor had said “but we’ll try our best. You can leave her in our care.”

It was expensive – and insurance covered only a fraction of the costs – but it didn’t matter. Mira was all he had. Money was no object.

He’d call up the clinic every week. “We’re working on it” is all they’d say.

The phone rang.

He was in no mood to pick it up. It went to voice mail. “Mr. Wilson, this is Dr. Adams from…”.

He grabbed the receiver.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Mr. Wilson, somebody wants to speak to you”.

“Papa”.

He froze.

“Papa”.

He couldn’t speak. Tears were flowing down his eyes.

He covered his eyes with his hand.

Nothing, NOTHING, could spoil his day now.

(Pic courtesy morguefile).

This post is written as part of the writetribe  initiative. 

7 x 7 x 7 x 7

 Here's the latest blogging assignment.

1.       Grab the 7th book from your bookshelf.

2.      Open it up to page 7.

3.      Pinpoint the 7th sentence on the page.

4.      Begin a poem/a piece of prose that begins with that sentence

5.      Limit it in length to 7 lines/7 sentences.

 So here goes. 

Text from A Pelican at Blandings – PG Wodehouse

Looking at Vanessa Polk, one could easily imagine her being kind to people, whether on or off ocean liners, for her warmth and geniality were obvious at a glance. Where Lady Constance had winced at the sight of Lord Emsworth like a Greek goddess finding a caterpillar in her salad, she smiled upon him as if their meeting was something to which she had been looking forward for years. It was a wide, charming, smile and it brought about a marked improvement in his morale. He felt, as so many did when smiled upon by Vanessa Polk, that he had found a friend.

‘How do you do?’ he said with a cordiality of which a short while before he would not have been capable. Then, remembering a good one, he added ‘Welcome to Blandings Castle. Tomorrow’ he said ‘I must show you my pig’. It was not an invitation he often extended to female visitors, for experience had taught him that the Empress was wasted on their shallow minds but here, he saw, was one worthy of the privilege. ‘Are you fond of pigs?’

 So here are my 7 lines:

Tomorrow, he said, I must show you my pig

All of Blandings, Ma’am, hath not one so big

Majestic is she, three hundred kilos and more

Outwardly tough, heart soft to the core

No ordinary pig, no, an Empress is she

A sight to behold, a joy for all to see

So Ma’am, er, are you fond of pigs?

Why I write

There is this bloggers’ initiative that I’ve recently started participating in. Every week a topic is given to participating bloggers – they need to write a blogpost on the topic.

This week the topic is “Why I write”.

So here goes.

I must start by saying I’ve never thought about this – and wouldn’t have, even now, if I hadn’t been prompted to do so.

I guess there are a few reasons I write.

1) My need to dump my thoughts onto SOME platform

Those who know me will vouch for the fact that there are some subjects that I am rather passionately interested in. Subjects that I follow on a daily basis. Like politics and current affairs. Social issues.  Films. Music. Sports, especially cricket.  And economics too (the practical side of it), though I don’t claim to understand much of what I read.

Anyway, I spend a lot of time reading on these topics. And formulating my own thoughts and opinions based on what I read and hear.

If all these thoughts / opinions remained only in my head, I think I’d go crazy. :-) I want to share them with others. Hear their points of view. Or, at the very least, get these thoughts out of my system.

Now, different people have different ways of expressing their thoughts – an artist might do it through a painting, a sculptor might do it through his sculptures, a cartoonist might do it through his cartoons. Since I sadly possess none of these skills, the route I have chosen is through the written word.

So that is one of the main reasons I write.

Note that the platform for dumping my thoughts is pretty random. It depends on what those thoughts are – and the level of detail. If it’s just a few lines, it usually ends up on Facebook or Twitter. Sometimes, I do decide to post it on my blog.  Sometimes, I just dump my thoughts on a Word document – and leave them there. And some thoughts don’t get dumped at all – they just die in my head.

My frame of mind often determines the format. Sometimes I think in poetry, sometimes in prose. But most importantly, once I’ve got my thoughts put down (in whatever format or platform), it feels good to have it out of my system.

2) Writing helps organize my thoughts

Another reason I write is that my thoughts tend to get better organized when I put them down in writing. This is something that I realized early on in life - in my school/college days. I’d read something, I’d think I understood it well enough – but then I’d try to put it down in writing, in my own words. And then realize that I hadn’t quite understood it as well as I thought I had. And I hated not understanding things.

So it became a habit for me to try to write down my thoughts. It was often a test of how much I knew and understood. And if I couldn’t write them down, I knew I was fooling myself.

This habit got into my work life too. Often I’d have meetings where we’d discuss a whole lot of things, often in a chaotic manner. At the end of it, I’d feel the only way to make some sense of it all would be to write down what was discussed.

So, for my own satisfaction, often right after the meeting, regardless of whether official minutes were being taken by anybody else or not, I’d make a “meeting recap” for myself. Point by point, with action points of who/what/when. I’d distribute it to the other attendees – who would then validate my understanding. But importantly, I felt comfortable and satisfied only when I made this recap. Often this recap would end up being treated as the official minutes of the meeting.

3) Have it in writing

Another reason I write is that my memory is rather poor (I know some people will disagree with my saying this, but it is true). 

I was once in a parking lot, staring at a whole lot of cars not knowing which one was mine. And that, when I'd been having that car for years! :-) I sometimes think I'm lucky that when I go out somewhere I manage to come back to my own home, instead of knocking on somebody else's door!

So I often write things down to remind myself. I know this isn’t “writing” in the sense of writing an article or a blogpost (as was probably intended by this writing prompt) but it still has to do with the written word.

Talking of the written word – and following from the above point about a poor memory - I must say I like written confirmation of verbal assurances. Whether given TO me, or BY me. If something is in writing, it leaves less scope for misunderstandings as people tend to think more about saying something in writing, than just verbally.

4) Longevity of the written word

Another reason I like writing is that there is a sense of longevity about it. The spoken word is nice, but it is here this moment, gone the next. The written word is there seemingly for eternity.

For example, if we look at scriptures or the holy texts or anything that has survived several generations over hundreds, or even thousands, of years, we find that much of all this still survives because, at some point in time, these were put down in writing. That which has been passed by word of mouth, from generation to generation, is more prone to adaptation and interpretation by the concerned persons, with consequent dilution of content.

And I’m not talking only about the Bible or Shakespeare’s works. There’s much to be said in favor of the written word. My father passed away a few years ago – I remember fondly some of the things he used to talk to me about. But what I have, as part of his legacy, are some letters he wrote to me at various points in time. Sometimes about mundane matters – but written with utmost love and affection, in his own, very good, handwriting. He is physically not here anymore – but his letters are. And they are part of my treasured possessions.

So this is an important reason I like to write. Not that I am leaving a legacy of any sort with what I write – but at least my thoughts do not remain only in my head. One day we all have to die – and when I do, hopefully my blog will still be around to let people (especially my family and friends) have some idea of my thoughts at a particular point in time, should they be interested at all.

Of course there is increasingly the other option – the video blog (or the vlog, as it is sometimes called). I have not tried it yet – and I think I might try it sometime – but I doubt it will replace my penchant for writing out my thoughts.

5) Love for writing

I think this might really be at the crux of it all. All the above reasons are valid reasons, no doubt, but at the heart of why I write is probably the heart itself. And that heart clearly has a love for writing.

  

If I didn’t love writing, it would be a chore. And it most certainly isn’t. Even when I’m writing rubbish (and that’s, more often than not, the case), the process of churning out this rubbish is quite enjoyable. And I’d say, even therapeutic. Which is also the reason why, even if there isn’t one person in this world who reads what I write, it doesn’t really matter.

As with most things one truly loves, the destination isn’t always the most important thing, sometimes the journey itself is.

For me, I guess it’s the same with writing.

Ode to the humble rose

From the day you first see light

From when you breathe as a bud

You know it’s a matter of time

‘Fore you lie crushed in mud

To bloom is to surely die

Ripe for an eager pluck

Yet bloom you certainly must

It’s a fate you cannot buck

A lady’s hair you adorn

Or to a bouquet you belong

Or, into a garland you go

You know you can never do wrong

Even as petals, you serve

To the Lord, they offer you so

Or, you lie on a person’s grave

On his last journey, with him you go

So short though your life may be

You have no grouse, grief or ire

For a rose lives not for its own sake

It lives for another’s desire.

(Pic courtesy http://sarabbit.openphoto.net/gallery/ )

This post is written as part of the write tribe initiative.

RIP Cricket (1877-2013)

Once upon a time

Not so long ago

There was a sport called cricket

That I loved to follow.

With bat and ball

And stumps and bails

Runs and wickets

And legends and tales.

The Ashes and Bradman

Sobers, and games tied

I read up on them all

With eyes ever wide.

Marshall to Gavaskar

Chandra to Richards

The magic, sheer magic

Of contests revered.

Was simpler back then

Little money, less support

Players, made but a bit

The game, much a sport.

Then along came the merchants

With dollars in their eyes

One mantra on their lips

Monetize, monetize, monetize.

Fair game indeed, why not

For the times were not the same

And he, who goes not with the flow

Has only himself to blame.

But then, alas, disaster

For it all went just too far

The greed, it killed the sport

A million cuts, many a scar.

So died the game called cricket

A business now in its place

In the quest for money and more

The game died, nary a trace.

R.I.P, cricket (as I knew it).

You Only Live Once (YOLO)

“You only live once”. YOLO.

This is something you hear a LOT nowadays.

For many people, this immediately triggers their imagination into doing all sorts of things with a sense of urgency. Mostly fun things.

For many, very high on their to-do list (if not right at the top) would be travelling around the world – to a lot of exotic places on this earth. And, increasingly, maybe space travel too.

And that’s understandable. This earth has SO much beauty – and so much mystery about it – that one could spend a lifetime discovering it. Just watching National Geographic (or Discovery Channel) on TV is such a rewarding experience for me – imagine if I could actually BE in all those exotic places! How awesome would THAT be! And I know I’m not alone with this mindset – I speak for millions.

And yet, it isn’t top of my to-do list. It’s at best, a nice-to-have.

True, my life would be incredibly enriched if I could do it. But somehow I wouldn’t consider it incredibly impoverished, if I couldn’t.

On the other hand, I WOULD consider my life considerably impoverished if I couldn’t put it to use for the benefit of others.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not pretending to be a saint – I am no saint. And charity begins at home, so one needs to keep that in mind too.

But different things appeal to different people – and what really makes ME very happy is to see others happy. That does more for me than any material acquisition.

So it is entirely in my selfish interest – of seeing others happy – that I choose others’ happiness as my goal. I am happy if they are happy. And it bothers me if they're not. Especially if it is for no fault of theirs.

This world isn’t fair. It isn’t a level playing field. Millions are deprived opportunities right at birth – purely because of where they are born, or what race or class or caste or gender (or other discriminatory stamp on their forehead) ensures they are deprived, or discriminated against, all their lives.

I’m acutely aware of having had a privileged life compared to these many millions – and no, I’m certainly not feeling guilty about it. But I’m not comfortable looking the other way either.  I’m not that desensitized yet. Thankfully.

So for me, “You Only Live Once” means I have only ONE opportunity to make a positive difference to others’ lives. Again, because it makes me happy.

Happier than travelling all around the world to the most exotic places there are to see and experience. 

And if that means that for most people in this world, I’m a fool, so be it!

I’m reminded of a couple of lines from an old Hindi film song (Sanyasi – 1975):

Kya maar sakegi maut usey, auron ke liye jo jeeta hai

Milta hai jahaan ka pyar usey, auron ke jo aansoo peeta hai

(What will death take away from him

He who lives to serve others

Rather, he has the love of the entire world with him

He who wipes tears off others’ faces)

So I’m not alone with this thought process. J

Ideally of course, I’d have it all – but we don’t live in an ideal world, and I DON’T have it all. Life’s about choices – and this is my choice. Another person might well have a different choice – and I fully respect that. To each his own, I always say.

So what is YOUR take on “You Only Live Once”?

This post is written as part of the write tribe initiative.

P.S:
To be honest, my thoughts on this subject are much deeper than a 500-word blogpost limit (which I've already exceeded :-)) allows me to express.

As a result, this post may come across to some as patronizing. It is certainly not intended to be so. All I can say is, those who know me personally will, I think, understand my thought process better. :-)

On Spot-fixing, the IPL and the BCCI

It’s been a while since I’ve written on cricket.

Not because there hasn’t been anything to write about – but because most of my own thoughts have been expressed, far more eloquently than I could have managed, by a host of far more knowledgeable writers. I’ve therefore restricted myself to enjoying reading those articles, instead of sharing my own little wisdom on them. I see no point in just amplifying the noise on a subject for the sake of contributing sound bytes.

Having said that, why then this article? That’s because, on the recent spot-fixing drama, there are some elements that I didn't quite find sufficiently (if at all) discussed in all the material that I came across. Of course, it's possible that I've missed something out there.

I’ve read a fair number of articles on the subject. And heard some other views too. They range from the extremes of “ban the IPL” (Sharad Yadav) to “it’s just three dirty men” (BCCI chairman, N. Srinivasan). In between, there are a whole host of views.

What I do notice – and very unsurprisingly – is a lot of IPL-bashing. And a lot of BCCI-bashing. For many, the IPL and the BCCI almost seem to be interchangeable, such has become the IPL’s influence on Indian cricket.

Before I go on, I think I must first state unambiguously where I stand on the IPL.

I do have some issues with the IPL. I don’t like the excessive commercialism, the loud commentary, the hype, the artificiality around it. And I must be honest – I find it difficult to respect batting when mishits and top edges go for a six. It is the worst form of an unequal contest between bat and ball that you can imagine. That both sides in the match operate within the same framework, isn’t exactly compensatory consolation. In the forty years that I’ve been following the game, the contest between bat and ball has always been holy.

But I’ve made my peace with the IPL over the years. And now, during IPL season, I enjoy it for what it is. I don’t compare it with other forms of cricket. And, if I manage to ignore all its irritants, I do often enjoy its thrills and tension. Test cricket will always be special for me – but the IPL has found its relevance too in my cricket following pursuits.

Now, onto spot-fixing and the IPL.

I think it is a bit unfair to make the IPL THE villain of the piece. It has its weaknesses but it is not THE reason we’re having spot-fixing. The IPL is just a tournament – and now the world’s most popular cricket tournament. So what do we want to do – ban it? We need to realize that cricket is competing with other sports (and other forms of entertainment) for eyeballs. The IPL, for a few weeks every year, attracts millions of followers of other sports/entertainment options to cricket. How is that not good for the game?

The problem lies elsewhere. It lies in not realizing significant underlying fundamental weakness in a system. Let me give an example.

Think of an unhygienic kitchen. If the hottest-selling item is soup – and  a large number of customers who’re complaining of food poisoning happen to be soup customers - just removing the soup from the menu isn’t going to help. The complaints will continue – they will just come from customers of other products. The soup was never the problem. The problem was the unhygienic kitchen.

The soup is the IPL. The BCCI is the kitchen. And the food poisoning is the fixing.

Let’s admit that there was spot-fixing before the IPL. And there will be spot-fixing after the IPL, if nothing else changes.

What needs to be done is to build strength in the system to prevent food poisoning.

For its part, sadly, the BCCI’s reactions to the whole drama have been entirely predictable. Starting with “expressing shock”, then soundbytes like “strictest action will be taken against the three involved” (at that time there were three known perpetrators, amongst the players). Of course the BCCI is “fully co-operating with the police”.

The overriding tone of the BCCI has been to defend the IPL, protect its image, to blame everything on “these three dirty men”, to play the age-old game of stating the problem to be way too complex - “we do our best but we cannot possibly monitor 200 players”.

All oh-so-predictable, anybody could have written the script and given it to the media, without their bothering the BCCI bigwigs at all.

What I'd have liked to have seen discussed more is some of the following: 

1)  The system and the players

It says a lot about what I think about cricket and cricketer ethics in today’s day and age, that the news of the spot-fixing scandal broke out a few days ago, I didn’t have the slightest sense of shock or surprise. Contrast this with April 2000. When the Cronje story began unraveling (and Indian players, including one of my then-favourites, captain Azharuddin, began getting named), I remember being STUNNED. In denial. Sick in the stomach. Depressed for months.

This time, with the Sreesanth episode? Nothing!

At the most, I can only say that I was disappointed that Sree had done this. I rated him as one of the better opening bowlers we’ve had in Test cricket in recent times – and would have been happy to see him back in the Test side. So I was disappointed that he chose to take this short-cut route to riches.

But I wasn’t surprised.

The IPL had got him good money - but when your aspirations exceed your ability to support them through legitimate means, you seek other means.

Sree had got used to the fast lane - money, fame, celebrity status, an expensive lifestyle. And on the cricketing front, life was going in exactly the opposite direction. The more he “needed” that wealth, the less his chances of getting it through normal cricketing efforts. His chances of getting back to the Indian side were fast receding. Not only for performance reasons but also because of his “terribly difficult person” image. And he was 30.

Imagine, then somebody comes along and tells him “Why do you worry? Bowl one bad over, and I’ll give you 50 lakhs”.

Come on! It’s the IPL – matches are played daily at such a frenzied pace. Where games are totally loaded in favour of batsmen, with short boundaries and a lot more. Where even the best of bowlers often go for sixes and fours.

Who’s going to notice an over going for 15 runs? So many overs go for much more than that.

And once the game’s over, it’s time to move on to the next. Nobody even remembers yesterday’s game. Yesterday’s gone.

All you see is the 50 lakhs in front of your eyes. That’s real – everything else is make-believe.

And hey, you don’t have to feel ashamed or awkward. It’s happening all the time – happened last year too. It’s so easy to do, it’s almost a no-brainer.. Think about YOUR future. If you don’t secure it NOW, when you can – when are you going to do it? You think your franchise cares about where you are in 5 years’ time? You think anybody cares?

So THIS is the player dilemma.

What would I do if I were in Sreesanth’s position?

Speaking purely for myself, I know I wouldn’t have gone with the offer (I say this because I HAVE refused very attractive financial deals in the past purely because they would have troubled my conscience). But that’s me – and I don’t have material aspirations like a Sreesanth does. So instead of using myself personally as a yardstick, I’m going to generalize a bit.

I cannot help feeling that many people – especially those with aspirations far outstripping ability - would probably do what Sreesanth did. It is JUST SO EASY to do. And there’s SO MUCH MONEY to make.

No, I’m not defending Sreesanth here. I’m just trying to be a little more realistic than some of those moral policemen out there. Suddenly Sreesanth has become devil incarnate – all I’m trying to say is it could just have been any A, B or C.

It is the SYSTEM that has weaknesses. An individual – while having his own mind – can easily fall prey to this system if he is not strong enough.

We keep talking about Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Kumble and Laxman as examples of cricketers who didn’t fall for the bait. We need to realize that these are successful, secure cricketers with long careers. They have received affection from millions of fans, for years – and have internalized this love. That has also made them strong – and relatively less vulnerable to being manipulated by devious third parties.

But that’s just five cricketers. There are many more out there – and many in domestic cricket – who do not enjoy this luxury. Of financial success. Of love. Some have an early sense of rejection. What’s to say they don’t have aspirations? In today’s India, aspirations seem to be everything – just look around you at the advertisements in the media.

THESE are the people most vulnerable to manipulation. Cricket can be cruel. Only eleven can make a team. You feel like a reject if you aren’t in that eleven. Especially if that happens on a consistent basis.

The IPL just happens to have many players in this category. They wouldn’t make it to the national team – but they enjoy recognition and fame for a few weeks every year, thanks to the IPL. And of course they make good money, better than they’d otherwise have made. But that may just fuel their aspirations to a different level altogether.

So I repeat – when legitimate means are insufficient to bridge the aspiration-ability gap, in many cases, illegitimate means will be resorted to, if they come with acceptably low (in this case near-zero) risk. The ends will justify the means.

2) Corrective measures

a) Be realistic about effectiveness of “mentoring”: After this broke out, the first thing I heard from some BCCI campists was “we need to improve mentoring”. I yawned. Had this been the year 2000, I might have bought this. At that time, there might have been a genuine case of fixing - and the shady-bookie menace - catching everybody on the wrong foot. The whole concept might have been new for some.

Today, in 2013, it is known to one and all involved with the game that this is THE biggest menace in the game. If a player is smart enough to win an IPL contract, he is smart enough to understand what is right and wrong. So now we need to “educate" a cricketer that if you don’t bowl like a bowler normally would, it is a wrong thing to do?

Yes, there are some cricketers out there who are suddenly thrown into the world of riches and glamour. Yes, they need to be cautioned about its negative side too. That they may have undesirable people trying to associate with them. And these may try to make them do things that go against the grain of the game that has made them what they are.

So let's have THIS level of mentoring. But we don’t need to make it sound any more effective than it really is. Repeated emphasis on it only tells me that the BCCI is trying to avoid other, more difficult to implement, solutions to address the issue.

Look at it this way. If a Rahul Dravid, considered THE role-model for one and all to uphold the spirit of the sport, can have his own team mates selling their souls behind his back, what chance does some “mentor” have? The intoxication of money, coupled with the near zero-risk, will drown any well-meaning mentor’s words in an instant. Maybe I’m being a bit skeptical here but I don’t think players quite have as much respect for other players and officials as is often made out by the romanticists. Of course, everything is hunky-dory in public. But in private, each person has to fight his own battle.

b) Be realistic about Anti-Corruption Units:  I would have found this laughable if the emotion of anger did not overwhelmingly dominate my mixed emotions. The ICC’s solution to prevent corruption in the game is its “Anti-Corruption and Security Unit” (ACSU). Never mind that their track record in uncovering corruption has been laughable, but the ICC still offered the services of this unit to the BCCI for IPL2. At a price of course.

The BCCI politely (or maybe not so politely) refused the offer, saying it was setting up its own ACSU unit. Interestingly, it’s been almost four years now – and this ACSU seems to be competing with the ICC’s ACSU in the ineffectiveness race.

To me – and maybe I’m being harsh here – setting up this ACSU was never really going to solve anything. It sounds good on paper, it’s one of those ISO9000 type things. You do it because it then “looks” like “you’ve got the processes in place” and therefore things “should be under control”.

In reality, what are the ACSU’s powers? Can they tap phone messages or other types of communications between players and others? Or is it that they are just present at matches and keep a look-out for suspicious characters? Like in an old-fashioned detective novel.

Let’s accept that the few culprits that have been caught so far, have been caught, not by an ACSU, but by another entity.

It was the Delhi police who stumbled upon Hansie Cronje’s activities  by accident.

It was a sting operation by the media that exposed Salman Butt and two of his team-mates in England in 2010.

It was the Delhi police again who stumbled upon Sreesanth and co’s activities this time, while looking for something completely different.

What has the BCCI’s ACSU been doing?  Why did it not pick up any signals? From the communication the Delhi police have, it is clear that there was fixing involved in IPL5 as well. This lends credence to the feeling that the three who got caught are the unlucky ones – there are others out there who’ve got away.

So much for the BCCI setting up an Anti-Corruption Unit!

And now, at its latest meeting, the BCCI has said it will be setting up ACSUs for each franchise! Great! Another great initiative on paper. But please excuse me if I’m not exactly holding my breath on expecting more cases to be caught and booked.

The point is – this is all INTERNAL. The players are contracted to the BCCI, they are the marketable property of the BCCI, the IPL is the BCCI’s most valuable property. So there is naturally going to be a conflict of interest for the BCCI to take strict action against any of these “properties”. At the most, the BCCI may sacrifice a lesser player as a scapegoat, to build credibility about its processes. Other than that, it is unlikely to rock its boat too much.

And that is why what we need is EXTERNAL.

The ACSU is like internal audit. It is important to have – it sets up processes with checks and balances, it does audits – and it reports deviations it comes across to management. And thereafter it’s upto management’s discretion whether to take further action or not. (I think in practice the ACSU isn’t even doing so much, but I’ll give it credit for now).

What we need is an external auditor-like authority. One who doesn’t care about the BCCI. Who isn’t paid by the BCCI. Who is empowered to do what it takes to check compliance. And who will objectively report its findings - not to the BCCI  -but to a third party.

And who has the skills to do so.

In effect, we are talking about a policing function. Much like what the Delhi police have done now.

I don’t think the ACSU quite cuts it. Not one ACSU, not ten ACSUs. I’m afraid the nefarious world of illegal betting and bookies is much too smart for the administrative type, watchdog type entity that the ACSU is. And extremely ruthless. I understand that a cop who filed an FIR in this matter was killed a few days ago.

I know the police is short of resources already but if the figure of Rs.40,000 crores being talked about as the value of illegal betting business in India is true, then it seems to be well worth dedicating police resources to this. It is not just about individual cricketers – it is about cleaning up the muck in the entire system.

c) Have more “sting operations”:  In India, the media has largely been reactive. Yet, there have been stories broken by the media that have been key to keeping politicians on their toes, and keeping the public aware of happenings. I know “sting operations” tend to have a negative connotation about them, but I believe, if the purpose isn’t unethical, they are great to expose crime and malpractice.

Last year, during the IPL, a sting operation by a TV channel exposed a few cricketers for wrongdoing. It was roundly criticized initially but the evidence was irrefutable and the cricketers were finally given due punishment. We need more of this to happen. If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to worry about. The “sting operation” can even be conducted by a private party and then shared with the media.

These are some of the corrective measures I can think about. This is by no means an exhaustive list. And I think we need every measure out there that helps reduce (I’m realistic enough not to say “eliminate”) this scourge of fixing. I see it as THE biggest menace in the game of cricket today.

What’s very frustrating is that the BCCI just does not seem to recognize the magnitude of the issue. It does some tinkering here and there, hoping that things will sort themselves out, in due course of time. We all know that’s not how these things work.

It is OUR game. The game for the fans of cricket. And for me personally, it is a game that I’ve been passionately following for the last 40 years. I’m damned if I’m going to just sit quiet and see it dying in front of my eyes. Even if I can’t stop it, I’m at least going to make a noise about it.