The problem with rage on nine occasions out of ten lies in its direction. Barring the odd occasion, it is aimless, rudderless, maddening and yet impotent. What it does is look for a suspect to pin all the blame, and wrath, on; and if it’s mob rage, bay for blood.

In the 24 hours since fixing became a tag word to be added for any report on IPL and cricket uploaded on the web, and Sreesanth turned from a cry baby to a crook (suspected, though not many suspect the veracity of the fixing claim), that rage has found its suspect in the BCCI, or the Indian cricket board.

In these 24 hours, questions are tapping each other on the shoulder to get to the front of the row as they wait to be ejected by the rage-mongers:

How is it possible that the BCCI didn’t know about all this nonsense?

How can the BCCI, with all its money and glam quotient intact, let crooks take over the IPL, and all its money and glam quotient as an addendum?

Why should heads not roll in the BCCI?

Why, pray, should the BCCI not be taken over by the government and run like a public sector company?

And why on earth should the BCCI not be brought under the RTI ambit — why can’t we know details of the level of dirt in the IPL’s or the cricket board’s linens?

And they all have one demand of the BCCI: punish the guilty so hard that no cricketer will ever dare reach out to their smart phones and accept a call from any fixer-bookie in future.

All innocent questions, though it’s questionable whether they are justified. Why is it, for instance, so surprising that the BCCI didn’t know about fixing? Sure, they could have got help of the ICC’s anti-corruption unit and all that jazz, but what has that famed unit itself done to check fixing and otherwise cleanse international cricket of corruption?

BCCI is doing what it is supposed to do — organise a tournament successfully, despite illogical rants of political parties (no matches involving Sri Lankans), falling viewership (scan the stands on television, if you are watching it on the telly that is), and some of its sponsors in a bit of a spot here and there (Sahara’s dalliance with courts for allegedly running illegal financial schemes, KKR sponsor Rose Valley Group’s run-in with regulators following the chit fund scam, some of the private banks’ alleged role in money laundering et cetera). The BCCI is supposed to control cricket in India, as the organisation’s title suggests, not operate law enforcement agencies.

The rant or rage is acceptable once evidence surfaces to suggest that the BCCI was aware of Sreesanth and company’s pecuniary infidelities but still kept mum.

In fact, one of the justifications for launching IPL was that it would fetch the cricketers enough money not to let them be enticed by bookies. That the idea failed, and the odd cricketer fell from whatever level of grace they were perched, is not the BCCI’s fault. That’s human psychology, best left to those batting and bowling on Freudian pitch.

And how on earth will bringing BCCI and IPL under the government — a la PSUs — help? The government has already run some the best PSUs to ground, and is slowly shedding weight in the rest, including the ratnas, maharatnas, the ratna sagars and whatnots. The IPL was not conceived by any minister or bureaucrat; if it was, it would have been a disaster worse than the Commonwealth Games; and if public authorities are given charge of running it next season, may the lord above help the league, its participants and the spectators.

For all his good intention in trying to get the national sports development Bill made an Act, then sports minister Ajay Maken should be politely reminded that the Commonwealth Games was more about scams than sports. And some of the national sports federations, which get government’s fiscal aid, are far worse in all respects so far as scruples are concerned.

No one minds the BCCI being brought under the RTI ambit, but what public good would that do? How, for instance, are we going to sleep any more peacefully if we know exactly how much Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, or Chris Gayle earns, or how N Srinivasan or Ratnakar Shetty got elected (names taken only as examples; no insinuation implied)?

As it is, we don’t know the income of most bureaucrats, some judges, most policemen and for politicians, we depend on the CAG or activists or the media to break the next scam and work out the percentages. And we still don’t know who all voted, for instance, for Siddaramaiah (again no insinuation) in the purported secret voting by the Congress legislators, though he will rule the roost in Karnataka for (presumably) the next five years.

As for the cries about punishment, well the BCCI can do pretty much what you or I can. The board has done what it could have — suspend the suspects, pending inquiry — now it is up to the police to press charges, and prove them in court. The BCCI can do precious little beyond this point.