End this controversy soon

Partab Ramchand

November 25, 1999

As if the Indian team does not have a tough task ahead of them in Australia, the snowballing effect of the controversial interview reported to have been given by the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India to the website rediff.com will only make things even more difficult for them. The sooner there is an amicable solution to the controversy, the better it will be for Indian cricket.

The unsavoury episode has its genesis with Lele having said a lot of uncharitable things about Indian cricket and some players in the course of the interview. On the face of things, it does sound incredible that the secretary of the BCCI should have said some of the things and the whole interview does have a rather bizarre ring about it. Lele in fact has denied that he said anything about the players and has disowned the comments said to have been made by him. He has in fact gone a step further and said he he is seeking legal opinion on the issue. The website's executive editor has however said he was standing by the story and the reporter. Asked about Lele's reported comments on the team's arrival in Sydney, coach Kapil Dev downplayed them and preferred to concentrate on the task ahead of his team. ``If he has said it, that is his opinion and we can't change anybody's opinion.'' Taking up the cudgels on Lele's behalf, BCCI president AC Muthiah said he had ``spoken to him to ascertain whether he had made any such statement. He totally denied having made the remarks.''

There are so many angles to this unhappy episode and as many characters. It has already snowballed into a major controversy and threatens to become an even bigger one. If it can be proved that Lele indeed has said all those things in the interview, then there is little doubt that stern action should be taken against him. Moreover, Lele has this reputation of shooting his mouth off and then issuing denials. But what he has reportedly said during the course of the interview transgresses all limits. If however, as he says, he has not made any such comments, then the truth should be ascertained. The Indian team has every right to get to the bottom of the matter for such comments, if indeed uttered by the BCCI secretary, can have a pretty damaging effect on the players. Either way, the ripples following the controversy should not be allowed to widen and engulf Indian cricket as a sort of cancerous growth.

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