The un-people of ICL

	Anyone, anything to do with the ICL must be banned © Cricinfo Ltd

Recently I found myself defending the principle of celebrating it, although I don’t think much of Valentine’s Day itself. Likewise, without being a fan of the ICL or indeed Twenty20 cricket, I have been defending its right to exist without being harassed by the Indian cricket board. Fascism, in one form or another, makes extremists of us all!

If the Indian board had its way, it would, metaphorically speaking, dig a mass grave for the likes of Kapil Dev and anyone remotely connected with the ICL. Perhaps erase their impressive records from international cricket. Pretend they didn’t exist, make them un-people. How dare they take our copied idea and run with it originally? Anyone, anything to do with the ICL must be banned.

Grocers who supply the Kapil Dev household with their monthly foodstuff must be banned. Butchers who supply the meat must be asked to leave Delhi. Anyone seen saying ‘Hello’ to ICL players, from taxi drivers to bookshop owners to airline pilots, must have their licenses revoked. No one whose initials are ICL - Inderjit Chandra Loknath, for example, or Ian Carmichael Lewis - should be allowed to play for India, or get his meat from the same butcher as Kapil Dev.

Silly? Ridiculous? Perhaps. But not sillier or more ridiculous than the board getting all pompous and deciding that Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik cannot play in a friendly Twenty20 game with a bunch of old timers just because a player involved, Hamish Marshall, once played in the ICL (he no longer does). What did the board achieve, apart from showing New Zealand Cricket who is boss (the cricket world knows that already), depriving the two Indians of some cricket, even if it is of the pointless Twenty20 variety, and robbing fans of the pleasure of watching them play?

The board never misses an opportunity to stick it into its counterparts around the world. This is a strange mixture of arrogance and uncertainty; of egotism and diffidence. How much longer before it insists India will not tour a country unless a certain number of Indian victories are written into the contract? Or - the more likely scenario - the rest of the world gets together, tells the Indian board to stuff itself and gives up on the money (India’s trump card) in exchange for self-respect? India argues the rest cannot exist without them, but the reverse is also true: India cannot exist without the rest.

The louder he talked of his honour, said Emerson, the faster we counted our spoons. The more often India speaks of principles, the louder grow the guffaws. This is the board which sees no clash of interests in its secretary (and perhaps others) owning a team that participates in its IPL. This is the board which has given itself the authority to clear the commentators who sing its praises on television.

It would be a pity if, just as the players work themselves into the top position in the world rankings, the board implodes with its own self-importance and India become the pariahs of world cricket.