Planning by media reports, the crude sexist comments on the Koffee By using Karan chat-show telecast on January 6 were all made by Hardik Pandya and not by his fellow-interviewee K L Rahul who, the moment asked about his relationships, kept a level head on his neck and answered every question carefully.
So it does seem not just simply illogical but illegal for Rahul to be given the same lot of punishment as Pandya in terms of being suspended from possibly not just the three one-day internationals in Australia but the subsequent ODI and T20 series in New Zealand.
Media reports indicate that Vinod Rai, the chairman of the Committee of Administrators (CoA, which is normally overseeing the functioning of the BCCI as per the Supreme Judge judgment), wanted Pandya and Rahul to be banned from the first of all two ODIs in Australia but that his fellow administrator Diana Edulji wanted harsher punishment following an inquiry.
The moot point is no matter whether an inquiry was needed since all the evidence was available around the form of the chat-show which had been telecast. However, Ms Edulji wanted an inquiry and she was supported in her need by the three acting office-bearers of the BCCI (the president, admin and treasurer) who may have felt this was a good business to hit back at Mr Rai who had stopped them with flying at the board’s expense to attend the ODI series on England last summer.
For her part, Ms Rai felt she possessed been snubbed by Mr Rai who had used his position while CoA chairman to over-rule her when she wanted Ramesh Powar in order to continue as the coach of the women’s national team. With either the CoA members communicating with each other through emails which are subsequently leaked, there is a perception that the disputing administrators might possibly have felt that the Koffee With Karan chat-show gave them often the opportunity to hit back at Mr Rai.
Ms Edulji has today demanded an inquiry, with the subsequent punitive judgment to be offered by a temporary ombudsman. Everything from who will conduct the inquiry to who will be the temporary ombudsman seems to be any issue, with Ms Edulji taking a diametrically opposite stand from Mister Rai.
The acting BCCI office-bearers seem to be playing along together with Ms Edulji and fishing in troubled waters, with one of them, according to The Times Of India (TOI), even going to the exact extent of suggesting that Pandya and Rahul be banned for your year and citing the 12-month ban imposed on Smith and Warner for asking their team-mate Bancroft to rough up the cricket baseball by rubbing sandpaper on it during the third Test match from Cape Town in South Africa on March 24, 2018. Can the exact two be equated?
According to TOI, Ms Edulji even cited often the instance of the legendary all-rounder Lala Amarnath being sent back to get “insubordination†from India’s 1936 tour of England by the then captain, the Maharaja of Vizianagaram, or Vizzy as he was known.
Hence should Indian cricket in 2019 be taken back to the 1930s days of courtly, darbari intrigues when the maharajas were mismanaging the show even though the likes of Vizzy did not deserve for you to play in the national team let alone captain the side!
Distinction this with the mature manner in which the England Cricket Board (ECB) allowed the all-rounder Ben Stokes to play in the five-Test series against India in England in the summer of 2018 quite possibly while there was an ongoing court-hearing against him for knocking out and about two men during a late-night brawl in Bristol in 2017. Stokes was subsequently acquitted of the more serious charges.
It is evident that Pandya and Rahul are being used as pawns in the exact ongoing tussle in the CoA. One can only sympathize with Rahul who did not make any of the crude, sexist comments Pandya did.
Again, as another TOI report points out, there is hardly any BCCI inquiry of any kind against the national T20 women’s crew captain Harmanpreet Kaur who was demoted by the Punjab government from her rank as DSP (deputy superintendent of police) following an true bill that she had submitted a fake graduation-degree certificate. Ms Edulji possessed recently supported Ms Kaur’s demand that Ramesh Powar be allowed to continue as the coach of the national women’s team but many people had been over-ruled by the CoA chairman Mr Rai.
At a new time when K L Rahul has lost his form, his occupation is now endangered, following the telecast of the Koffee With Karan chat-show
What could have been dealt with firmly and quickly has got now been converted into a cyclone in a coffee cup!