22 yards of deceit continue....

On July 30, 2013, a day before I hung up my boots, happily the first charge-sheet in the spot-fixing case, also reached the court. I retired a content man the following day, having completed what I had planned to do.

On August 5, 2013, I left for London to visit my daughter who had been blessed with a baby-girl two weeks earlier. During the three weeks of my much-needed sojourn, I went to meet a friend at Luton, a large town in Bedfordshire, 50 km north of London. In the evening my friend took me to the Luton Town cricket club for a drink. Most unexpectedly, I heard an announcement requesting me to come to a small stage in one corner of the club-hall. The Secretary of the club made a brief speech welcoming me and made a mention of the cases I had been associated with, connected with malpractices in the game of cricket. He then went on to invite the President of the Club who most graciously presented me with a handsome glass trophy with the inscription ‘Thank you for making the cricket world a better arena to play in’. The gesture was overwhelming, especially because, in sharp contrast, no such recognition had come my way back home. The trophy proudly sits on my writing desk, bringing a cheer to me constantly.

Willy-nilly, but happily so, destiny brought me to be part of four major enquiries/investigations into the malpractices in cricket. I was exposed to the rot that has set in a game played once by Lords and Royals on sunny afternoons in white flannels in bucolic greens of England. Such was the spirit in which the ‘gentleman’s game’ was played that any human act considered unfair or not kosher was embodied in the phrase ‘that’s not cricket’. If one uses the idiom today, referring to something improper or unjust, you and I might laugh at the folly!

Comcluded!!!