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| June 26, 2000 | ||
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| CRICKET Bet and Bowl By Sayantan Chakravarty
Even for a game wedded to numbers, it is an obscure piece of trivia. Of the cricketers who have scored over 10,000 runs in first class cricket, only five average above 60. On top of the list is the inimitable Donald Bradman, with an astounding 95.14 runs per innings. No. 3 is a man currently in the eye of cricket's ever worsening storm, a man who, till the King Commission displaced him, dominated headlines in the newspapers, a man called Ajay Sharma. A former India cap -- one Test, 31 one-day internationals -- Sharma, 36, has been in the public focus ever since INDIA TODAY broke the news of his suspected links to the bookmaker-fixer syndicate ("Who Is Guilty?", May, 1). That was around the time he left the country for England, where he has been playing club cricket for Padiham, in Burney, Manchester. It was revealed that Sharma had used his cell phone to call bookies -- their description as per police records -- and to contact Mohammed Azharuddin on the eve of every India match this season. Though he has an explanation for everything (see interview), the authorities suspect Sharma was the conduit between bookies and the Indian cricket team. When the Manoj Prabhakar tapes were revealed to the world, Sharma was pushed even further into the dock by two testimonies, if that be the word, to the hidden microphone. The first was that of Ritu Shastri, cricketer Ravi's wife, who once had two men identifying themselves as "Ajay Sharma's cousins" barging into her flat late at night demanding her husband sign a mysterious contract. The second was that of Divya Nautiyal, Lucknow-based promoter of the Apace chit fund company, who tells Prabhakar that Sharma had his car "snatched away by bookies" over payment problems. He later admits to handling betting money on behalf of Sharma and Azharuddin and, at one stage, transferring their funds to a "south Indian in Bangalore". The upshot of all these seemingly unconnected occurrences has been a declaration by Joint Director R.N. Sawani, head of the CBI team investigating the cricket scandal, that Sharma is the only cricketer against whom the agency has evidence of match-fixing. Sawani and his officers are waiting to question Sharma, who says he will return home in September. What specifically does the CBI have against Sharma? Neither rhetorical statements nor emotional confessions but, instead, copious cell phone records. Over the past two years, the Indian cricket team has played limited overs tournaments in Dhaka, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Toronto, Kenya, England and, of course, at home. A scrutiny of Sharma's cell phone usage indicates, a CBI officer says, "a striking spurt" during these tournaments. He would talk, literally hundreds of times, to many "businessmen" -- all well-known on the betting circuit -- largely in the Delhi area but some in Mumbai too. There are also two cricketers who figure regularly among Sharma's match-time interlocutors. One, of course, is Azharuddin. The other is a flamboyant aristocrat cricketer who is a resident of the capital and, now, is under the Income Tax Department's microscope for recently purchasing a house in Delhi's upper crust Uday Park area for Rs 85 lakh. The conversations with the players generally took place on the day before or the day of a match. "This leads us to believe," says a CBI officer, "that Sharma was feeding information from bookies to his friends in the team. Once we begin questioning him he'll have a lot of explaining to do." How strong is the CBI's case against Sharma? If and when his nexus with rigging rings is established, how will he be tried? Joginder Singh, former CBI director, says, "Technically the CBI can prosecute public servants under the Prevention of Corruption Act. So, Sharma being one (he works for the public-sector Central Warehousing Corporation), he can turn out to be a key to investigations." Vishwa Bandhu Gupta, additional commissioner of income tax, disagrees. He argues that the CBI may not have any case at all under the Prevention of Corruption Act if it cannot establish that Sharma "made pecuniary gains by misusing his official position". The case will then be governed by the less stringent parameters of tax evasion or concealment of income and so on. As the CBI waits for Sharma to come back and answer its queries, it is also readying to question his friends. A television producer who is reportedly "pally" with Sharma and a secretary-level official in the Union Home Ministry who is seen as a mentor of sorts are expected to be spoken to shortly. The big day though will arrive when Sharma is interrogated. Who knows, he may dethrone the King Commission from the shock value charts. |
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How
is it that in the entire game plan of Manoj Prabhakar one name does not
feature at all -- that of Ajay Sharma, who, as we keep reading, is on the
top of the list of all match-fixing investigations?