Kapil Sibal is a classical Indian politician. You got a problem? I got a harangue for you. That’s his style of operation.

So in comes the union law minister as Indian cricket goes from crisis to crisis on Saturday, with calls now coming from all around for the cricket board president to resign, and holds a press conference.

And what does Sibal announce? That the government would bring in a new law to fix the crisis of fixing. Bah! As if that would fix anything!
“We cannot let down millions of fans out there for whom cricket is a passion, for whom the sport of cricket is almost a religion,” Sibal told the press, gallantly, adding that the new law will apply to all sports, and not just cricket. “We would like the law to be as broad as possible to deal with all kinds of unfair practices.”

And Sibal had more: he said the attorney general of India – a certain Goolam Vahanvati, in news recently after the CBI director told the supreme court that he had not only “glanced” through the draft status report on the agency’s probe into the coal blocks allocation scam but also suggested changes in them — is in favour of a new law to deal with fixing in sports.

That’s all fine. But it seems like a five-year plan. The last time the government had tried to clip the wings of sports administrators – again not only those of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) but all sports bodies – by trying to set a age and tenure limit to office bearers of federations, the draft national sports development bill was shown a red card by the union cabinet itself.

This was despite the fact that the draft bill, a brainchild of then sports minister Ajay Maken, was backed by the three most important figures in the union cabinet then: prime minister Manmohan Singh, then home minister P Chidambaram and then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.

So Sibal’s tough talking on a thriller-a-minute Saturday – by early afternoon Gurunath Meiyappan, son-in-law of BCCI chief N Srinivasan and ‘team principal’ of IPL’s Chennai Super Kings team, was arrested and sent to police custody till May 29, Srinivasan himself had told NDTV that he had done no wrong and thus has no reason to step down from holding the top post in Indian cricket, and IPL chairman and Congress parliamentarian Rajiv Shukla was quoted by sections of the media that the BCCI is meeting to discuss whether Srinivasan deserves an axe – holds little promise. What is needed is action, and action to be taken now.

Sibal’s solution is no solution – it will be seen when, if at all, it comes. Till then, the government seemingly has little to do to clean up the game. So instead of jumping on the bandwagon to get its share of limelight for the allocated five minutes, and acting busy, the government should stay off.

More than a new law, what’s needed is strict enforcement of even the existing law/s. But then, that’s where most problems merely begin in India.