The Indian ‘victory’ has been a calculated one. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) delivered a sanitised version of the happenings within the working committee meeting in the Capital this evening, and the overall tone of the one-page statement issued after an over two-hour meeting, was sober.

Words were chosen right, and as treasurer N Srinivasan briefly said, it was a “long deliberation” that was condensed into the page. “The working committee met to discuss the issues on the Australia tour, and we have come to a unanimous conclusion,” he said. Neither he nor vice-president Rajiv Shukla, the two who addressed the press briefing, took any questions, but it was learnt that the official statement was the principal handiwork of Arun Jaitley, who has also been instrumental in wording the proceedings in Sydney over the Harbhajan Singh issue as well as the Steve Bucknor issue. Jaitley did not meet the press.

Incidentally, today’s official statement has no mention of the Steve Bucknor issue or of the fact that the ICC has actually replaced him with Billy Bowden. Questions on this by this correspondent fetched no official response (“no comment on that”), but it was learnt that the BCCI, as of now, does not wish to take credit for that, especially with Board president Sharad Pawar set to be in the hot seat next year before the World Cup.

Also, what was not made clear in the press meet was the mood in the working committee, which reacted strongly at the players’ insistence that the status of the tour be reviewed. This has reflected in the sentence: “The BCCI will review the tour and all other developments continuously.”