So now everyone is coming out of the woodwork and slamming the IPL for being a scam and a blot on cricket. A week ago, for an interminable two months, they were telling us how the IPL is the most exciting innovation ever and just look at the crowds. Every single commentator on TV was having orgasms about the game being at its best.

I think along with greed the most abundant element on display is hypocrisy.

Maybe I am wrong but a lot of these resignations in the BCCI are less noble than designed to get off the firing line. Who knows who you have been seen talking to in the stands? Look at the mean way that picture of Mrs Dhoni with Vindoo the Villain keeps popping up everywhere. So much for media ethics. Guilty by visual association!

Which brings me to the main point. Technically, if you are a purist, the BCCI-selected team is not the Indian team; it is and always has been the BCCI XI. The BCCI is a private body paying taxes. It is a corporation and it is private. Equally technically, you and I should, under the law, also be permitted to have our own cricket teams and they should have equal right to represent India, as does the BCCI. Legally, ask any lawyer and he’ll tell you ‘uhmmmmm, you have a point’.

Over the years, the distinction has blurred and the cash-rich BCCI has been allowed to monopolise the right to create a team that represents the nation. No one ever asked why. It’s time the Indian team was selected by the Indian authorities and not a private company.

Think about it.

Meanwhile, two funny points. One, it is comical the way the BCCI is trying to distance itself from the IPL after enjoying VIP treatment for six years. The BCCI officials had the best seats, all the power and now they are all behaving like it wasn’t their party, they were just passing by and forbid the thought they loved it. These same piety splashing folks wrecked the bipartisan Sharjah experiment run by AR Bukhatir, the only one in the world that gave over $4 million to indigent subcontinental cricketers for their services to the game. 

And won’t Lalit Modi be falling over himself with mirth wherever he is? He created the IPL – oh, just give it back to him and let the showbiz continue. At least he wasn’t pious about it like this lot. How are they any better than him?

Now, let me ask you a question. Sreesanth, the little crybaby he is, is supposedly accused of promising to give 14 runs. Right? And we have all nodded wisely and are going scrub, scrub to eliminate the blot from the game.

Okay answer me this. How do you give away 14 runs unless the batsmen, the fielders and the umpires are party to the arrangement. You cannot do it alone; that is plain sense.

There is much more than you and I are being told. That’s why they are all getting out of the kitchen before the kitchen gets too hot.