Why is the BCCI allowing fixing speculation to flourish in India?

Reportedly coming in March is an ad campaign from the BCCI that will have the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly claiming the IPL has always been corruption free. Given the league has faced fixing allegations the last two years, and three players from the Rajasthan Royals were arrested last season and are currently on trial, just how the campaign is supposed to convince the fans of its message remains unclear.

The campaign, however, remains the BCCI’s only response in the wake of the Mudgal Committee report’s conclusions and recommendations, which include further investigations of the IPL, specifically a match between Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals last season.

Now the BCCI is a firm believer in the code of Omerta. For the Indian cricket board silence is not just golden, it is priceless. The less it says, the less grist there is for the media’s mill to grind.

This strategy normally works well for the board but in this instance is backfiring. The board’s silence has forced the media to look elsewhere to keep the story going. G Sampath Kumar, the current SP Railyways in Thiruchirapally, has been quoted in a national newspaper and appeared on a news channel saying India captain MS Dhoni’s name came up in an interrogation of a bookie and he recommended further investigation.

Earlier this month Vindoo Dara Singh, who was arrested by the Mumbai police at the same time as Gurunath Meiyappan, BCCI president N Srinviasan’s son-in-law and defacto head of the Chennai Super Kings, told IANS that he was caught in a crossfire between Srinivasan and banned former IPL chairman, Lalit Modi.

The latest juicy tidbit to tumble out of the closet comes from Zee News, which in a sting operation, captured Vindoo saying on camera that betting and fixing is rampant in the IPL and Sharad Pawar was behind Meiyappan’s arrest as a way of getting back at Srinivasan. Vindoo goes on to claim that Bangalore Royal Challenges’ owner Vijay Mallya bets heavily and offers examples of fixed matches, including one between Pune Warriors India and Hyderabad Sunrisers in which Pune needed something like 25 runs to win with four overs left and 6 wickets in hand – and lost.

In the absence of any word or denial from the BCCI, these stories and their implications are getting plenty of play. In turn, the board’s silence is increasingly looking like an admission of guilt rather than prudent strategy to avoid feeding a potential media frenzy. It has effectively handed leadership of the story to those beyond its citadel and led to more questions, which has led to further speculation in the absence of any real answers.

In an editorial, ESPNcricinfo has called on MS Dhoni to answer the questions now swirling around him .

“It is out of step with reality and harmful for the credibility of the world’s most powerful cricketer for him to maintain silence. His name needs to be cleared, by him or by his bosses. They will not be in contempt of court if they do so but they could be in contempt of the public if they do not.”

The same logic holds for the BCCI and Srinivasan. The Mudgal committee concluded Meiyappan was the defacto owner of CSK despite Srinviasan and Dhoni testifying to the contrary. At best, Srinivasan, as BCCI president and Managing Director of India Cements is guilty of gross negligence in believing Meiyappan had nothing official to do with CSK. At worst, he is part of an attempted cover-up in order to save CSK from the repurcussions of Meiyappan’s infractions.

Occasionally, the board is quick to squash stories that it feels are not in its interest. BCCI secretary Sanjay Patel wasted no time in denying a story in the Hindustan Times that they had sounded out former England coach Andy Flower about taking over as India coach when Duncan Fletcher’s contract expires next month.

Dhoni and Srinivasan would do well to adopt the same approach to the fixing scandal. In this case their silence, far from starving a fire of oxygen, is only serving to fan the flames.