It was one Delhi Test I’m not likely to forget — Sachin Tendulkar’s 35th century, Kumble and Muralitharan’s five-wicket hauls, and Sourav Ganguly’s omission for the next match despite 79 fairly crucial runs.

In the middle of those cricketing highlights, some romantic, some political, two tiny incidents made me throw my head back and laugh. First, the sight screen couldn’t be moved because its tyres had been tampered with; second, the super-sopper didn’t work because someone had removed the screws that held its engine together. It was sabotage of the most peculiar nature, and there were whispers that someone from the “enemy camp” had struck. But the funny thing was that fingers were being pointed in every direction because there were too many hostile groups within the never-boring Delhi and Districts Cricket Association (DDCA).

This past week, the same DDCA was in the middle of another, much bigger, controversy that threatened to envelop, perhaps even overthrow, its influential sports committee. And since it was triggered by Delhi cricket’s most celebrated son Virender Sehwag, everyone jumped in — current players, former players, fans, and the city’s cricket journalists (most of whom had run long campaigns against the association that had so far fallen on deaf ears).

The DDCA is an organisation that encourages, even inspires, cynicism. So the whole cricket fraternity was suddenly at its cynical best, remembering only in flashes that this was not just an opportunity to vent its frustration but also to examine, if not redress, some of the association’s systemic ills.

... contd.