The continuing farce that is the Indian cricket team

Oh dear. As might have been predicted every move made by Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Greg Chappell is being watched as though they are a car crash in motion (which they may well be). And when footage appeared which seemed to show Dravid and Ganguly yelling at each other while Chappell looked on, one television station didn't hesitate to replay the images again and again.

You might have thought that this was a big story in itself, but this is just where things start to get interesting. The real story begins when rumours surfaced that the head of the Indian cricket board had asked the television network to stop showing the images. The press quickly descended on the President of the board, Sharad Pawar, to find out exactly what he said to the television executives. Pawar clearly decided that things were still not quite interesting enough. "Its all a creation of the media..." he said of the story. And that really should have been all he said. Instead he couldn't quite resist a last word and a not-so-veiled threat. "If they want to show the pictures, it is up to them." he added, "But they will have to come to my country next."

I wonder if this threat has any connection to the story that the Indian cricket board wants to deprive broadcast rights holders (like the television network in question) of their exclusive privilege to televise cricket? A legal challenge which incidently could deprive New Zealand Cricket of a small fortune in television contracts with Indian broadcasters.