Let's not attempt to put the halos back

Sujata Prakash

Most people still can't figure out whether Rasputin was an evil genius or a genius schmuck. Alive, he was a saint and a sinner in equal parts. Dead, the public made the sinner just a bit more saintly. Assasination has that effect on us; it makes us magnanimous towards the victim.

Punishing cricket stars with life bans also seems to have the same effect. Some of the angry voices demanding blood have tempered down. Scribes who were warning of the collossal tragedy awaiting Indian cricket if the guilty were not punished, are now writing how tragic it would be if Azhar's contribution to cricket is forgotten. Raj bhai had to choke back a sob when he said the punishment was too severe. A few readers wrote to say how hyprocritical it is to single out players when we have worse cheats in all walks of life. One asked, don't you evade taxes and have undeclared income?

Let's try and understand first if the punishment is actually too severe. Allan Border thinks not. He thinks Azhar is lucky to escape a jail sentence. Azhar is also lucky not to be in Singapore. They don't take to match-fixing kindly there. A few days back, a 27-year-old Australian soccer player was sentenced to five months in prison for fixing local league matches. And the press said Mirko Jurilj is 'lucky' to have got off lightly - he could have faced upto 5 years in prison. So no, a life ban for a player who was on the verge of retirement is not catastrophic by any means.

When it comes to his contribution to cricket, the issue might not be one of forgetting his achievements but rather of not caring about them. This will be Azhar's real tragedy. His gifts to Indian cricket are already being cited as match-fixing among others. What once evoked awe -- the three back-to-back centuries on Test debut, that magnificent innings at Lord's, his wristy batting and so forth -- is now in danger of being swept aside contemptuously by the very fans who had idolised him. They haven't forgotten any of it; they just might not give a damn any more.

Just as a few have started to do for one of the greatest knocks ever: a once-in-a-lifetime 174 not out at Tunbridge Wells. How did we get to this point? Does it really matter if Kapil Dev has some undeclared income, especially if 9 out of 10 of us could find ourselves in the same category? Yes, it does if that income is suspected to come from cheating and/or bribery. There's a difference in hiding income earned legitimately vs illegitimately. The IRS will disagree but we're discussing cricket and what makes us not care about a player's contributions.

We haven't forgotten Jadeja's bulldozing of Waqar Younis in the 96 WC, but it has ceased to amaze. The picture of a man fighting for his country is papered over with one of selling his country. And the tragedy lies not in our short memories, but in the needlessness of it all.

No doubt as time goes by more and more advocates of the players being treated kinder will speak out. Someone will remind us of Azhar wielding his bat like Joyce did his pen; another will say that Jadeja was peerless when it came to the slog overs. Hopefully, they will be in the minority. To clean the game (and the board) sentiment must be put aside for the moment and the unrelenting government, public and media pressure continued. It's all right to make the sinner a little saintlier, but please, let's not attempt to put the halos back.