'How do any of the cricketers who have been idolised by millions of fans not just for their ability, but also for their integrity and strength of character, continue to stay silent spectators, asks Faisal Shariff.
It was the 1987-1988 season; Ravi Shastri was the stand-in captain for a one-dayer he thought was a benefit match with no status against the touring West Indies team. It was only at the toss that the rival captain, Vivian Richards, told him the match was an ODI, but not part of the series.
Shastri, then a debonair cricketer with a reputation of being some sort of a rebel, threw the kitchen sink at one and all with the maximum sting reserved for the BCCI.
A year later, he was part of an elite group of cricketers who took the BCCI to the Supreme Court for banning them for playing matches in the US, which the powers-that-be had termed forbidden.
In 2002, the same Shastri took on then BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya in a live television challenge over the contracts dispute. He took up cudgels on behalf of the players as they battled clauses in the ICC Members Participation Agreement whose fine print was apparently not read through by anyone at the BCCI.
Cut to 2013 and we have a different avatar of Shastri. It seems as if he is reborn with a new set of ideals and purposes, which has nothing to do with the Shastri of the 1980s and 1990s or even of 2002.
Quite often, he is a shadow of the rebel who once took on the Board.
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