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Govt takes a hand, summons Lele, Dalmiya to Delhi

The Federal government -- more particularly, the Minister of State for Sports Sukhdev Singh Dhingra -- has summoned ICC chairman Jagmohan Dalmiya and BCCI secretary Jaywant Lele to Delhi immediately.

Also required to appear before the minister at a later date in April are national captain Saurav Ganguly and coach Kapil Dev.

The development is hugely interesting, signalling as it does a marked change from previous policy on match-fixing allegations. In the past, such allegations tended to remain localised storms in the media teacup -- largely ignored by the police and the Federal government, and brushed aside by the cricket establishment.

The Cronje Caper has changed all that. For starters, for the first time, a match-fixing issue is linked to an official police case of criminal conspiracy -- something that cannot be either wished away, or buried by means of a stage-managed inquiry, as was done in the case of Manoj Prabhakar's allegations.

More interestingly, the Federal government has never -- never, ever -- interfered in the internal workings of the BCCI, which by its constitution is an entirely autonomous body. The summoning of Dalmiya, Lele, Ganguly and Kapil to Delhi makes for a marked departure from that norm. And indications are that this has been sparked off by the fact that increasingly, the match-fixing allegations, almost all of which appear to originate in the Indian sub-continent, have proved a major national embarassment, as opposed to one that merely affects the cricket establishment.

The sports ministry and by extension the Federal government has, for quite a while, wanted to dilute the autonomy of the BCCI, and to have a say, at whatever level, in the workings of Indian cricket. Thus far, the autonomous nature of the cricket board's constitution has permitted it to resist such moves. For the first time, thanks to the Cronje tapes, the government has in hand a stick to beat the BCCI with -- and the summons issued to Dalmiya and Lele appear to indicate that the government is fully prepared to use that stick.