Moving off the field, it is interesting to note that the BCCI may have changed administrations, but not their ways.
During the previous regime, Jagmohan Dalmiya and his front man JY Lele banned Rediff from match grounds. Not officially, but de facto, by denying us accreditation to cover matches. And on one occasion when Faisal Shariff asked Dalmiya for an interview to clarify a few things, he was told that since Rediff was taking potshots at him all the time, he wasn't interested in doing the interview (this, despite being told that we were interested in his side of the story).
'Write something positive about me and then we will see,' was Dalmiya's response to our request.
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We got around the ban by telling the players, both Indian and visiting, about it -- and they promptly flooded us with VIP passes from their quota, which led to some amusing incidents when Lele found one or the other of us at a ground we were not supposed to be in, stomped up to demand how we had gotten in, and we told him with considerable glee that we were in possession of not just press passes, but VIP ones, that permitted us, if we so desired, to go sit in the BCCI's own box, so what was he going to do about it?
Kadambari Murali and her colleagues at Hindustan Times might want to take a leaf from our playbook of then; it is HT's turn to face the 'wrath' of the BCCI functionaries. At least, I think that is what is happening; after filtering out the imaginary conversation and focusing on the real, turns out none in the BCCI will actually confirm they are banning HT -- which, too, is par for that particular course.
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