The repercussions will be felt loud and long

Probably for the first time in Indian cricket, it has been English weather - and this in the midst of summer. The atmosphere is gloomy and cloudy and the only difference is that instead of the ball, allegations and counter allegations are swinging back and forth between players and officials. Can anybody curtail this swing?

Former Indian allrounder Manoj Prabhakar has taken up the job of an investigator with the help of a website journalist to find out the truth himself. Six years after the alleged bribe offer and three years since he first broke the story in a magazine interview, no action was taken. Leave alone action, no one even believed him.

Using a hidden camera both Prabhakar and the journalist of the website tehelka.com have exposed a seamier side of the story, where eminent personalities, apparently caught unaware, have accepted that matchfixing is rampant in India. The revelations may be shocking but the modus operandi may get appreciation even from the investigative agencies.

The unravelling of a fresh chapter in the match fixing episode by Prabhakar could well have repurcussions, more so because of the fact that he has played the recordings of private conversations in public. With the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) making a probe into match-fixing and having met officials, Prabhakar should have given his findings to them instead of using unethical means of calling a press conference and baring all. Whether video tapes will be accepted as evidence in court is unclear.

Prabhakar's motive is clear. He wants to prove that he is not lying. But by dragging so many names in his fight against an individual, he might have done more harm to himself and the trust one placed on him. He said ``I just wanted to prove that I was not talking in thin air. It is for all of you to see that all these people say something to me in private and entirely the opposite thing in public. During the course of this clandestine recording some charges have also come on me. But to cleanse the dirty system, I had to myself go into the dirt and some mud came on me as well."

Prabhakar himself accepted at the end of the press conference that he will be left with no friends in cricketing circles. But will the drama end here or is there more to come? One thing is sure, there are going to be more press conferences and more defamation suits to follow.

Surely Prabhakar's timing of making the tapes public needs to be questioned. The Indian team for the Asia Cup felt confident at the end of the Pune camp, inspite of the serious allegations against the coach. But on the eve of the Dhaka competition came this bombshell. If Prabhakar's main aim is to cleanse the system, he should have taken the legal course instead.

One only hopes that this mud slinging stops. If it continues, the game in the country will suffer irrepairable damage. As it is, Indian Indian cricket may never be same again with this betrayal of trust. Surely the repercussions will be felt loud and long.