NEWS
SCHEDULES
COLUMNS
PREVIOUS TOURS
OTHER SPORTS
STATISTICS
INTERVIEWS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

That is not what I told Chandrachud: Mankad

The article written on the Chandrachud report, carried on Rediff on Saturday, produced an avalance of mail.

Most were condemnatory of the former judge's part in the whole coverup. Some asked questions -- of which one went, why, with all of match-fixing to probe, are you wasting time rubbishing Chandrachud's report?

Good question, and the answer is pretty simple: The report in question is Indian cricket's figleaf. Try talking to the administrators about match-fixing and even today, even after all this, they say, but that is why we appointed the Chandrachud commission, to inquire into all this, we have even tabled that report in Parliament, what more do you want us to do?

Until this fig leaf is completely stripped away, and it is shown, sans doubt, that under that fig leaf lies a whole, sorry mess, the Chandrachud report will continue to be held up as the administration's answer to all inconvenient questions.

And that explains why we have focussed on the former jurist's effort at a coverup. Another aspect of which, we intend to look at here.

One of the ploys the jurist used is to keep the secretary out of the room, and take down the comments of those whom he interviewed, in his own hand. It is on the basis of his own notes that Chandrachud then wrote the report. The question is, how much of a match is there between what was said, and what was written down?

Here is one instance: When Manoj Prabhakar was asked to indicate games that he thought were suspect, he mentioned a match in Sharjah between India and Pakistan, in which he claimed that the respective skippers Mohammad Azharuddin and Aamir Sohail had walked out to toss, and then come back, each claiming to have won the toss.

Chandrachud answers that by quoting, among others, the manager of the Indian team for that tournament -- Ashok Mankad, to give him a name. And these are Mankad's words, as quoted by Chandrachud: "The Sharjah match of which he speaks did not take place at all. Besides, it was an inconsequential match since India had reached the final."

The statement on the face of it didn't make sense -- how could the manager of the side have said the match did not take place at all, when it so clearly did? (In our report of Saturday, appended below this article, details of the game are provided in case you need a memory-freshener)

So we checked with Ashok Mankad. And this is what the then Indian manager, and now coach of the Mumbai Ranji team, had to say:

"This is not what I said. I was not referring to the Sharjah game, but to the game in Sri Lanka in which Manoj claimed to have been offered Rs 25 lakh by a team-mate. That game did not take place, and that is what I told the judge."

In other words, Mankad's quote about one game had been taken and used to refute an allegation about an entirely different game altogether. Which, not to mince words, constitutes misrepresentation.

Whether the misrepresentation was deliberate, or inadvertent, is best left to you to judge. One thing is clear, however -- the functioning of the commission was haphazard, if you want to be kind; and downright shoddy, if you want to tell it like it is.

Now this raises a larger question. Lying to the public is one thing -- politicians do it all the time and so, it now turns out, do cricketers, cricket administrators, even retired jurists.

However, lying to Parliament is an entirely different thing altogether. Tabling a report, officially, which is full of untruths lays you open to punitive action being taken against you by the privileges committee of that body.

And in this case, former jurist Chandrachud has prepared, and the BCCI has tabled in Parliament, a report that is patently full of untruths. Which opens up the question -- will the nation's lawgivers take this lying down, or will they be sufficiently concerned to take the matter up?

The coming days should give us the answer to that one.

Meanwhile, just for interest, we asked Mankad what actually happened that day in Sharjah. This is what he said: "The Pakistan coach, Intikhab Alam, Imran Khan, Azhar and I had decided that since the game started late, the side batting second would continue even if the light was not good.

"And this was decided even before the toss took place. As the game was not of any importance to us, we (Azhar and I) agreed to it. India had already qualified in the finals and also when the light faded, Pakistan had already made it to the finals by crossing 198 runs batting first, which was the criteria.

"During the match when the light started fading, I asked the two players who were batting to continue batting since we had already committed to completing the 50 overs."

Now for another viewpoint -- this time from Kiran More, who was one of the two batsmen out there during the final stages of the farce: "We could not see much from the dressing room ourselves, when Manoj and Sanjay Manjrekar were batting. It was very dark. And Waqar was at his peak. It was nothing short of suicide. I went in to bat and when we appealed for the light as well, we were told by the team manager to continue playing.

"The twelfth man who came out with gloves and then water gave us orders to continue playing. There was no way we were going to get to the total. I think it is a feat that we got within 4 runs of the target.

"I was wondering how the manager allowed for the game to go on in that kind of fading light. We were wondering in the dressing room about what was going on in the match."

The events described, read in tandem with earlier reports, raise a whole host of uncomfortable questions. And prima facie, would seem to afford sufficient grounds for an investigation.

First, just what was the interest, among the organisers, in ensuring that though the game started late and though it was known that in that time of the year, dusk falls early, the game would be played over the full 50 overs? Further, even granting that a decision was taken before the toss, as Mankad says, such a decision is hardly cast in stone. Obviously, there was the prospect of physical danger to the players. So why was that decision not rethought? Wherefore the insistence that the game be played through to a conclusion?

In recent times, in India, and in the West Indies, international games have been called off because it was thought that the pitches could constitute a menace, and cause physical danger. So obviously, the wellbeing of players is a factor that is considered. Why, then, was it completely disregarded in this instance? What is more startling is that the manager over-ruled the players, who wanted to appeal for light, and ordered play to continue in what was a match of little consequence -- India had already reached the final and Pakistan qualified when it crossed 198 runs in its own innings.

There was nothing at stake. So why was the game not called off? Could it be because of the betting on the eventual outcome? It is an angle that would by any yardstick appear worthy of investigation by the authorities.

And speaking of authorities, there's this. Former South African coach Bob Woolmer, speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, makes some statements that raise eyebrows sky high. We quote:

"I had pleaded with Hansie Cronje four years ago to ignore Indian bookmakers...

"He told me about an offer the side had to throw a match in Bombay in 1996 and asked, 'What do you think?' said Woolmer.

"I said, 'Don't even dare think about it'. I told him match-fixing was one of the most heinous crimes in sport and he shouldn't consider getting involved.

"Rumours of match fixing were rife at the time, but if Hansie took money during my term as coach I will never forgive him."

"There were underlying features why we were ripe for the approach before that game," Woolmer said.

"It was at the end of a long tour and we didn't want to play the match and even went to the ICC to try and get it cancelled.

"We were always going to struggle, then suddenly a bloke turns up and offers us $US500,000 to lose.

"I really urged him (Cronje) not to do it, but I knew the team discussed an offer at a team meeting.

"I have since read where they discussed it at two more meetings, which surprised me."

Now this can't be Woolmer speaking, can it? The same Bob Woolmer who, when the story of Cronje's tapes first broke, said flat out in his column that the whole thing was a fraud, that it was cooked up by Indian journalists as revenge, because Cronje had denied them interviews (which incidentally is less than correct -- Hansie Cronje had in fact given Rediff two separate interviews, which you will find on our site)?

At the time, Woolmer's statements were passed off as the natural reaction of a good friend who, having known Cronje from close quarters, and who had never seen Cronje involved in anything questionable, couldn't believe what he was hearing. Cronje? Match-fixing? In the same breath? No way, Jose!

By that yardstick, you could perhaps excuse, even forgive, Woolmer his over-reaction.

But now? It turns out that fully four years before the latest incident, Woolmer was aware that Cronje had been approached by bookmakers. That instead of rejecting the offer outright, as you would expect a man of Cronje's much-hyped honesty to do, he had actually felt that it merited discussion in a team meeting -- not once, but thrice. It turns out that Woolmer knew four years ago that there was a possibility Cronje would take money, which is why he had to "plead" with him to resist the temptation.

So when Woolmer said that the Cronje tapes were a fraud, cooked up by Indian journalists hand in glove with the Delhi police, he said so despite being privy to those events of the past that cast Cronje in less than honest light.

Will Woolmer have the grace to acknowledge that he was in error, that he had slandered the entire tribe of Indian journalists and with them, the law-enforcement machinery, and will he apologise? Or would the Delhi police and the journalists' association be within their rights to sue him for defamation?

RELATED STORIES:'

The four monkeys
Night cricket without the floodlights
Murky doings in Sharjah

Prem Panicker