So, they start off with a sideshow of forced bonhomiewhere Australian Cricket Board chief Dennis Rogers shares the podium with his Pakistani counterpart Khalid Mahmood. In a pompous baritone, Rogers tries to convince the 20-odd print and television commandos that we are not bitter enemies. We know each other for seven months now. Then follows some soulful language: Tyranny of distance and time leads to certain evils; We want to reassure the Australian public there is no bitterness.
Then, a Tomahawk missile from Mark Roy of The Age. Did the Australian board apologise to the Pakistan board for keeping to themselves the fact that Mark Waugh and Shane Warne had been fined? Rogers is forced to reply: The relation we had we didn't have to apologise. When his turn came, Mahmood threw in this nuggetthat he had met Rogers for the first time in London last year. Then, the predictable: The misunderstandings have been removed. We hope to continue to work together.
At the conference room, much more interesting things were happening. icc president Jagmohan Dalmiya was addressing the board through tele-conferences. For how long? There was considerable speculation in the absence of any press briefings on the first day.
What jiggery-pokery were the 20 members up to? The only fact to chew on was that the representatives from England and Pakistan had strong objections to the discussion paper passed on to them on the match-fixing issue by Dave Richards, chief executive officer, icc, overnight.
The search for conflict is an eternal media obsession. But in Christchurch the icc troops were roaming with opaque eyes and frozen stareskeeping every press terrorist who stalked the hotel lobby and even the loo at bay.
Of course, the basics had already been done. Messages left in the voice mails of all 20 icc members. Sir Clyde Walcott is the only one who reaches out to your desperation. And H.R.H. Tunka (Peter) Imran, who is on the board from Malaysia. You feel like telling him that with a name like that he could make a serious case for football career. But you are grateful that he doesn't look at you like he was humouring a lunatic (Dave Richards has perfected that look and also Lord Maclaurin of the English board). In fact, he throws you a scrap of meat. He tells you, in spite of the media blanket, that Mr Dalmiya was on the phone for 20 minutes. You revel in that intelligence. Another tells you that Sri Lanka had won its bid for hosting the under-19 youth World Cup. From another comes the info that Australian umpire Darrell Hair's broth was about to be cooked for his comments on Muralitharan's bowling action.
Then comes the much-awaited session in which Richards is going to be pounced on by 20 icc honchos. The spirits and suspense of the press corps is high. ucbsa chief Ali Bacher has informed sections of the roving maniacs that their visit to Christchurch wouldn't have been 'unwarranted'. So maybe some heads were going to roll. Maybe the icc had convinced Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to take on the probe.
Richards performs well. He doesn't flinch when asked whether he had informed president Dalmiya about the fines on Warne and Waugh. He calls it a 'private matter'. Maybe, he's following the Clinton saga a little too closely. He goes through the five sheafs of paper that he dumps on the media. And announces the setting up of the icc judicial commissionits three members are not yet known. To be fair, as Malcolm Conn from The Australian puts it, it's a step forward. But a lot depends on potential actions downstream.
But is any Indian politician serious about it? Already, within an hour of the document's release, a board member confided in conspiratorial tones about the inquiry going on in Pakistan, Off the record, nothing is going to happen till the World Cup. They don't want to spoil their team. Complementing this revelation was a statement from bcci president Raj Singh Dungarpur that he was satisfied with the Justice Chandrachud inquiry and saw no reason to order another.
The most relevant clause in the document in light of such attitudes, becomes section C of Article 8: In its absolute discretion, if it is not satisfied that any cricket board...has completed or declined to complete the review requested to the satisfaction of the icc commission, the icc commission may carry out its own review. The standing of the judicial commission might hinge on this single Article, for so far no cricket board, including Australia, has been antiseptic enough to earn the confidence of millions of fans on an issue that, for all the insolence the cricket boards have brandished, is a relevant one.
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