Voice of cricket or voice of loyalty?

By John Cheeran
How truthful are our cricketers?
Or better still our former cricketers, when faced with a question of cricket?
It is like everyone has an arse, and all former cricketers have an opinion.
So it was not surprising when lots of those Ex-es jumped in to comment on the Sourav Ganguly dismissal.
It was important to have a neutral voice to lend credibility to the cacophony of a campaign to reserve a place for West Bengal in the Indian team. That neutral voice apparently came from EAS Prasanna.
The news agencies were describing Prasanna as the spin legend. Prasanna, as everyone knows, played for Karnataka in Ranji Trophy and hails from Bangalore, home to Indian captain Rahul Dravid.
If you get a man from Bangalore to speak for Ganguly, wouldn’t that be the argument-clinching voice?
“I am shocked. I don't think he should have been treated like this. He performed quite well in the Delhi Test (against Sri Lanka). Dropping him from the third Test defies logic," Prasanna said.
"He has served Indian cricket for years. You can't treat such a cricketer so shabbily," an upset Prasanna added. "To sum up, I feel that history has repeated itself. This is the manner in which we have been treating our heroes. And this is one more such case," he said.
Noble sentiments, indeed.
But what the reports concealed was the fact Prasanna lives these days in Calcutta and he is the son-in-law to the City of Joy. Prasanna’s loyalties are more with Bengal than to Bangalore.
So it was natural that Prasanna, the so called neutral voice, was used as a megaphone for Ganguly.
And quite a few Mr Ex-es from Delhi too ventured to support Ganguly. Is that a surprise when Delhi and District Cricket Association voted for Dalmiya lobby in the board elections?
Chetan Chauhan, Maninder Singh and Surinder Khanna all sympathized with Ganguly. Kirti Azad, another one to lose out in the BCCI battle, said that it was one of the saddest days in the annals of Indian cricket.
“No one can raise a finger at his performance in Delhi. He was involved in good partnerships. I am shocked. I am running short of words to explaining how I feel,” he said.
Azad’s comments show how badly hurt he is by the BCCI bruise. Other worthies to offer sound bites in favour of Ganguly were East Zone stalwarts Arun Lal and Saba Karim. What else can they say?
I should mention that in Sharad Pawar’s backyard, Dilip Vengsarkar came in support of Ganguly. But then Vengsarkar is the rebel in Mumbai, who had lost his own fights within the Mumbai Cricket Association.
Former wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani too expressed his sympathies. But the Karnataka Cricket Association has been in love with Dalmiya and Kirmani was chairman of selectors when Dalmiya ruled the roost.
See, the kind of axes all these former cricketers carry around with them so that they can grind them whenever the opportunities arise.
In this cacophony of voices, one should do well to remember that those who have remained silent too have own thoughts.