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When Gavaskar defended Srinivasan...
Today the Supreme Court of India gave Sunil Gavaskar another hat to wear.
Gavaskar will now open a new innings as an administrator, and hopefully reinstate the trust of the common man in a game which is akin to religion in India.
Despite BCCI opposing the court's directive to make Gavaskar the head of IPL 7, he has always toed the board's line. So much so that last year, he was accused of remaining silent during the spot-fixing and betting controversies. While former cricketers bayed for N Srinivasan’s head, Gavaskar was never part of that group.
In fact, the batting legend went ahead and defended the former BCCI boss.
When the BCCI set up a commission to probe the charges levelled against Chennai Super Kings official and Srinivasan’s son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, the legendary batsman did not see any issue in two IPL governing council members being a part of that probe and was of the opinion that there should not be any doubts over the fairness of the probe.
Take a look at what he said last year: "For us to doubt the integrity of the IPL governing council members is just not on. It is not fair to doubt their integrity only because of the fact that they are going to probe the Gurunath issue."
If this is not enough, take a look at this: Asked about Srinivasan describing S Sreesanth and his two Rajasthan Royals team-mates as accused while he did not do so while referring to Gurunath, Gavasakar said it was just a matter of semantics.
"It is a matter of this or that. Not everybody is fluent in their language. Many a time you cannot express what you want to convey. It's not a big deal and let's not go about these semantics. All these people are under investigation by national agencies. Let the police complete their investigation," he added.
It is secondary to say that the Bombay high court declared BCCI’s probe panel ‘illegal’. More on that here.
We just hope that Gavaskar grabs this opportunity and resurrects the faith of the common man in cricket and BCCI.