Get your facts straight, Mr Lele

Former Indian allrounder Manoj Prabhakar's revelation may have all the ingredients of a thriller. But if one reads the actual transcripts of Prabhakar's taped interview with BCCI secretary Jaywant Lele, one is convinced that some of the points presented there are not exactly facts.

The fact that the match scorecards which Lele refers shows otherwise, as pointed out by one of my colleagues. If the intention of Prabhakar was to come out clean and point fingers at others, he should have cross checked the facts before making it public. Now who's going to take the responsibility, Prabhakar, Lele or the web site. It is appropriate to quote Abraham Lincoln: "One can fool some of the people some of the time, all the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time."

In the two matches referred to by Lele - the first one in the conversation - the eighth match of the Singer series between India and New Zealand in Colombo in July 1998 was washed out since rain interrupted play after 31.1 overs. The match was then abandoned. In the final, India were off to a rousing start with Tendulkar and Ganguly putting on a record 252 runs first wicket partnership. Both Azharuddin and Jadeja were out bowled for 5 and 25 respectively and India won the match by six runs to lift the Cup. Robin Singh and Ajit Agarkar were the two batsmen run out.

The following are excerpts from the transcripts between Prabhakar and Lele in the tehelka.com website show that the latter is way off the mark:

Prabhakar: You know the person

Lele: I know the person. Now I'm telling you one to one. In this team, the only top person is Sachin. Now I'll tell you one thing. It is a fact. 200 per cent fact. I was told about this the moment this happened. This is related to the India versus New Zealand match in Sri Lanka. Earlier at 6:30 or so one person rang me up and said, Kal aap log haar rahe ho (Tomorrow you are going to lose). New Zealand will win the match. Jadeja and Azhar will be run out.

Prabhakar: Where's this person? In Sri Lanka?

Lele: The person was from India. It was a qualifying match.

Prabhakar: Where was the match taking place, sir?

Lele: Sri Lanka... You will not believe, whatever was decided, the same thing happened exactly. Azharuddin was run out, Jadeja was run out. Sachin was playing. He saw to it that India won the game. And we reached the final. The final was against Sri Lanka. We have never ever won a match against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka. Raat ko (at night), again the same person phoned. He said, I don't know what happened yesterday but you won the game. But tomorrow India is definitely not going to win the game. Sri Lanka is going to be the champions. Anshuman again went to Sachin. Told him the same thing. And we again won the important match. Two consecutive matches we won.

The actual facts can be found if one checks the links of the matches given below. Readers can make their own judgement as obviously the transcript above and the facts and the scorecard given below do not match. If one goes by these transcripts, Lele has not got his facts right and he is trying to charge the players of wrong doing.

Here are the links of the Singer Akai Nidahas Trophy tournament played in Sri Lanka in 1998 which Lele refers to.