No Easy Cure for Indian Cricket

The miasma of corruption claims hanging over the Board of Control for Cricket in India, by far the most powerful body in the game because of its financial clout, is not going away any time soon.

Jagmohan Dalmiya has said his return to  the Indian cricket board is temporary.

Jagmohan Dalmiya, the former president of the board who has returned to the role as an interim measure while incumbent Narayanaswami Srinivasan steps down during investigations, was not kidding when he told his first news conference that he did not have “any medicine with which you get an instant result.”

He said he would do his best to see that “the good name of cricket is retained.” Smart as Dalmiya undoubtedly is, he is a bit late on that one. This is now a matter of restoration, rather than retention.

Any hopes that the air might be cleared by Srinivasan’s stepping down have been dashed by the refusal of the board secretary Sanjay Jagdale to return to the job Monday. His resignation late last week, along with that of the treasurer, Ajay Shirke, was the terminal blow to Srinivasan’s hopes of staying in the job. Shirke has also refused to return.

Jagdale, a generally well-respected administrator, was also to represent the cricket board on the panel investigating the allegations against Srinivasan.

Arguments continue over exactly what happened at the meeting at which Srinivasan agreed to step down. BCCI reports said that nobody had asked Srinivasan to resign outright.

But Inderjit Singh Bindra, president of the Punjab Cricket Association, formerly Dalmiya’s crucial ally during the period when he was the most powerful member of the International Cricket Council, said he had called for precisely that.

“I said this sham will not satisfy the public,” said Bindra, who said he had argued that “he should resign and come back if exonerated.”

The rest of the cricketing world, whose attention would otherwise be fixed on the Champions Trophy, an eight-team competition for the leading nations that starts in Great Britain on Thursday, has looked on agog and warily. Ndtv Cricket, an Indian Web site, reported Tuesday that officials accompanying the India team were “so scared about the issues confronting Indian cricket” that they were “keeping the Indian media at arm’s length.”

There will, though, be huge curiosity as to who will represent India when the International Cricket Council meets in London this month. Srinivasan said Sunday that he might still attend. This seems unlikely, but Dalmiya declined Monday to commit himself to attending.

The Indian cricket board, a body that likes to be in control of events, instead finds itself to some extent at their mercy. One such event, due this week, is the arrival of a report on the Indian Premier League this year from the I.C.C.’s anti-corruption and security unit. Should that find evidence of fixing beyond that already exposed by police investigations, it would be tough for the Indian board to resist â€" as it has done so far â€" the suggestion by its former president Shashank Manohar that the police be called in for a thorough investigation of every Indian Premier League match played in 2013.

Another is the continuing police investigation into the source of Srinivasan’s problems â€" the allegations of spot-fixing on Indian games by his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, a powerful official with the Chennai Super Kings franchise.

Meiyappan, 35, was released on bail on Tuesday, together with the actor Vindu Dara Singh, who is accused of being his go-between with bookies. On Monday, the Times of India reported police tapes in which Singh claimed to have moles in all nine Indian Premier League franchises and told Meiyappan, “You just place bets and don’t worry. I am trying to get more information from my source” in the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Dalmiya’s intentions are also a factor. He has declared he will remain in his current role only for as long as he is needed. He is, after all, 73.

But after being chased out of the board in 2006 amid allegations, subsequently dropped, of misuse of funds, he would be less than human not to relish both the ironies of his return and the widespread comparisons to the mythical phoenix.

Interim bosses who do well have a habit of staying around. It says something about the state of Indian cricket administration that a man seen not so long ago as something of an ogre, ruthlessly driving up Indian cricket’s income flows and using that financial clout to get his way internationally, now looks, by comparison, a clean, safe pair of hands.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 5, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.