Fix the fixers

The die was cast that day in April when Delhi Police, displaying uncharacteristic efficiency and doggedness, exposed South African skipper Hansie Cronje. It was the first real evidence of the bookie-player nexus. In the six months since, the Indian cricket lover has watched her romance with the much-loved game die an unnatural death as cricket has flitted in and out of news with depressing regularity for reasons that have always had to do with the completely unsporting action off the field. There has been innuendo and speculation, the furtive videotapes of private conversations, those sensational raids when Income Tax sleuths swooped down on the establishments of the cricket world’s high and mighty, and Kapil Dev’s resignation as coach of the Indian team. Now that the CBI has submitted its report on match-fixing to the Union Sports Ministry, the question is this: Will the 152-page report in the brown envelope herald the final act in the sordid saga? Will it help us to nab the guilty men of Indian cricket sothat we can pick up the pieces and, yes, move on with the game?

The significance of the CBI report lies not in the newness of its revelations but in the official status it invests them with. Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Sharma, Nayan Mongia, Manoj Prabhakar — there are no surprises here though there is more than a little irony in the last given that Prabhakar also played at being whistle-blower in-chief. The agency’s pinning down of the figures involved in the backroom transactions — Rs 50,000 to Rs 500,000 to throw a match — have also lost their ability to shock six months of speculation down the line. Basically, the CBI has only confirmed Indian cricket’s worst kept secret in recent times. But what happens now that it has been given the sanction of police? Surely, this is a turning point in the scandal. The truth is that this moment will have to be seized if the entire match-fixing scandal is not to fizzle out, like so many scams before it, into nothingness. It will not be easy, as some have already pointed out, to frame cases that can stand up in a court of law. It hasbeen suggested that while regular cases may be framed against Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma for accumulating assets disproportionate to their known sources of wealth given that both are public servants, the rest may just get away. Admittedly, many grey areas will have to be wrestled with in a legal system which does not spell out matchfixing as crime. But now that the CBI has done its job, ways must be worked out to overcome these technical hurdles and the process of justice helped along to its logical conclusion.

Of course, the suspects have already lost their place in the team — their punishment has already begun. But those who have loved the game so deeply and for so long deserve more. Those who have betrayed the nation’s trust must be held more firmly and more openly accountable for their crime, they must not be allowed any hiding place behind the ill-defined law or other technicalities. In the last instance, the scandal that has paralysed Indian cricket deserves a cathartic denouement so that we can get down to the task of salvaging what remains of the still much-loved game. Perhaps the first step would be to make the CBI report public.