The New Zealand cricket team was scheduled to play two warm-up matches against the Board resident’s XI at the CCI grounds (Brabourne Stadium) on 17 and 19 October 2017. Mumbai Police had, on their home department’s orders, informed the CCI that if they wanted security cover for the matches they would have to deposit a certain amount of money in the government treasury. The CCI had, in turn, requested the CEO of the BCCI to do the needful. The CEO, inadvertently or negligently, had either forgotten to respond to the email specifying this requirement or had forgotten to forward it to the concerned office at the BCCI. As the day of the first match approached, Mumbai Police refused to deploy their personnel since the requisite amount had not been deposited by the BCCI.
The match was scheduled to commence the following day.
Rahul Johri, if I remember correctly, had just returned from one of his international tours, and was made aware of what had happened. Since the matter pertained to Mumbai Police, he attempted to pass on the buck to me when, in reality, he himself had failed to respond to the request for payment that the CCI had made to him. He sent me an SMS ‘. . . Why did we not anticipate? Please ensure all loops are closed and confirm the same to me.’
My response was, ‘CCI says they had written to BCCI a month back but nobody responded . . . Who dealt with that communication in the Board should be asked.’
His response, as if he were my boss, was: ‘Please stop blaming people and resolve the issue. We should have anticipated.’
I replied, ‘I don’t quite appreciate the tone and tenor of your messages. I have been putting up with your discourteous behaviour for some time. Don’t expect me to take it lying down. I don’t care for this damn job in case you feel I am dying to keep it.’
A few days later, on 24 October 2017, Devendra Pandey, special sports correspondent at Indian Express, called me to enquire if I had been invited to attend a meeting of the CoA in Delhi the following day. When I replied in the affirmative, Pandey informed me I was likely to be asked to explain my position on the CCI situation and that I should be ready with answers. I did not take him seriously and was dismissive of his advice.
The following day, with a prior appointment, I met Rai at the Delhi Gymkhana tennis court and showed him the exchange of text messages between Rahul Johri and me. I made it amply clear that the CEO’s behaviour was unacceptable to me. Johri should know he was dealing with a former IPS officer and that he should mind his language. Rai pretended he was totally on my side and said, ‘Rahul suffers from an acute inferiority complex.
You should not get upset. I will caution him suitably.’
The CoA meeting at Hotel Maurya Sheraton was scheduled for just a couple of hours later. The same day, India was playing the second ODI against New Zealand at Pune and a TV channel was streaming what it claimed to be a sting on Pandurang Salgaonkar, the curator (the person who prepares and maintains the pitch) of the Pune stadium. The purported sting attempted to show that the curator had agreed to doctor the pitch for a fee, which, in reality, was not true, as subsequent enquiries showed.
But coming as it did on the eve of the match, it was big news.
Before the meeting started, I briefed Vinod Rai on the sting which, prima facie, seemed to be without any substance. In my presence, he received a call from someone asking him whether the match should proceed or be cancelled given the sting. He was quick to decide that it should go on as scheduled. He thanked me for giving him a heads-up, which had helped him decide the matter quickly.
At the meeting, Rai, to my horror, began by asking me about the slip-up with regard to the CCI. Only two hours earlier I had explained everything to him and had shown him the exchange of text messages between Johri and me, and yet he was seeking my explanation. And how was it that Pandey of Indian Express knew that I would be questioned on this?
I felt the blood rush to my head. It was clearly a deliberate attempt on the part of Johri to put me on the mat before all the attendees of the meeting, a plan presumably shared with the Express reporter. And Rai was playing into his hands despite having been briefed by me only a few hours earlier, thinking nothing about putting me in an awkward position. I told Rai, ‘Sir, we can discuss it separately.’ ‘No’, he said, ‘it is better if everyone knows what really happened.’ I repeated what I had told him a little earlier, exposing the act of omission on the part of Johri. I let everyone know that the CEO had slipped up by not responding to an important communication and had failed to delegate the task to anyone else. All that had been required of him was to transfer the requisite amount of money to the CCI who were hosting the match on behalf of the BCCI. The CCI, in turn, would have deposited the money with the Maharashtra government, and the last-minute confusion would not have arisen, I explained.
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When Johri was asked to respond, he projected himself as a poor victim and said something to the effect that he had no option but to turn to experts in his hour of need in the interests of the Board. Rai clearly seemed to be on his side, and once the discussion on this subject was over, I decided to stage a walkout in sheer disgust.
Looking back at the sequence of events, I continue to be appalled and outraged. The defaulting CEO had conspired with the chief administrator to embarrass me and pass on the blame for his own misdoings to me in a meeting and had shared his plans with a journalist. Even more hurtful was that Rai pretended to be on my side only a couple of hours earlier and conducted himself in the meeting along the lines his CEO had scripted for him, even when he knew all the facts.
Until this incident, I had held Vinod Rai in high esteem as I had had no reason to have any negative opinion of him. Easily a six-footer, fit as a fiddle, he has an impressive and imposing personality. During all my interactions with him he had been courteous, but with my experience of that morning, I had seen a different side of him.
This excerpt from Neeraj Kumar’s ‘A Cop in Cricket’ has been published with permission from Juggernaut