Implications of playing it by ear, Wadekar style

MUMBAI, June 14: Ajit Wadekar is not the first to take the ire escape route by saying, ``I have been misquoted''. It's not uncommon for pub...

MUMBAI, June 14: Ajit Wadekar is not the first to take the ire escape route by saying, “I have been misquoted”. It’s not uncommon for public figures to seek refuge in the cliche to slander the press when he/she has found himself choking with his/her own foot in the mouth. But Wadekar may certainly be a rare species in denying his own signed statement, where he said that he had “kept a tap on their (players’) telephone conversations for a month or so without the players’ knowledge” to ascertain whether they had any objectionable links with bookies. The word `lucky’ has been Wadekar’s famous prefix. But not this time as The Indian Express produced his own fax to nail his fiction.

The admitting to tapping the phones raises some pertinent questions legal and moral.

Does his self-admitted action constitute a criminal transgression under Indian laws ?

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Eminent legal luminary Nani Palkhivala believes that Wadekar has not committed a criminal offence as his intention was to find out the truth into allegations whether players were illegally hand-in-glove with bookies.

But would the players who were spied upon react kindly to Wadekar’s undercover methods ? After all, they must now be wondering what all the manager must have heard while they were obliviously talking personal and private matters to their wives and girlfriends. Worse, the former manager’s unprecedented action might have helped the hotel staff to sensational `eves-dropping’.

Tiger Pataudi, Wadekar’s predecessor as India skipper, said that had he been one of the players whose phone had been tapped, he would have dragged him to court. “I would have felt very embarrassed about it and would have sued him. I think Ajit went beyond the call of duty.”

Kirti Azad, the former India all-rounder, opined that Wadekar was making a “childish” statement. “With all due respect to a senior player like Ajit, I think it was a ridiculous statement to make. The team has to change hotels virtually every week and I don’t know how he could have managed that.

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Moreover, how could any five star hotel could have agreed to such thing? But if indeed he had managed to tap even once and if I was one of the victims, I would have thrown him into the sea. It’s too personal and a breach on the private lives of the players. Honestly, it was a statement only a juvenile delinquent can make.”

The functioning of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has always been cloaked in secrecy. But even the BCCI was quick to go public by denying any knowledge that Manoj Prabhakar was offered a sum of Rs 25 lakhs by a team-mate to sabotage the India Singer Cup match against Pakistan at Colombo in 1994.

Just before leaving for London to take over as the first president of the International Cricket Council, the normally reticent BCCI secretary Jagmohan Dalmiya virtually questioned Wadekar’s judgment in not mentioning that in his post-tour report to the Board.

Following Dalmiya’s statement was Prabhakar’s telling comment about the Colombo incident in the latest issue of Outlook: “…at the time of the incident, I had made all efforts to inform the concerned persons and they had advised me to forget it and carry on with the game. I do hope everybody understands what this means.”

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`Hunter’ Prabhakar has fired another blank. A bullet that does not kill, but hurts nevertheless.