Monday, April 1, 2002 Last Thursday, I had my 15 seconds of infamy. I was led in to an empty hall, made to sit behind a large round glass table and told to stare at a television camera. The lady behind the camera was considerate but a touch condescending about my lack of experience in live television. An earphone was thrust in my right ear and the microphone was neatly plugged to the rim of my lapel, and there I was, a hopeless bundle of nerves, about to be charged with conspiring with the English to undermine Indian cricket. The unseen tormentor sat in a studio 1200 kilometres away in New Delhi.

The subject of agitation was an article by Scyld Berry in the April issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly which questioned a conflict of interest in Sunil Gavaskar's roles as media professional and chairman of ICC's Cricket Committee – Playing. Berry put forward a spirited argument against former cricketers wearing too many hats, citing Gavaskar's forceful public criticism of Ashley Giles's negative, outside-leg bowling against India in the recent Tests as inappropriate given his role in laying down the playing regulations.

But his otherwise fine piece of writing was spoilt by two errors not uncommon among journalists. One, he fell to the temptation of building a stronger case against Gavaskar by imputing motive. Two, he made a factual error. He insinuated that Gavaskar's attack on England was rooted in his proximity to the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, Jagmohan Dalmiya. He made it worse by claiming that Dalmiya "sits on the board" of Hindustan Times, the newspaper in which Gavaskar's column appeared.

To start with, Gavaskar's match reports and columns are widely syndicated by his own company, Professional Management Group, and appear in many Indian newspapers apart from Hindustan Times. But crucially, Dalmiya, as Hindustan Times lost no time in pointing out in a hard-hitting front-page report, resigned from the newspaper's board last May.

To the average Indian eye, this seemed a classic case of an English vendetta against Dalmiya the usurper. The television presenter said as much by terming Berry's piece a retaliation against Dalmiya's recent victory at Cape Town where he got the ICC to reconstitute the referees' commission looking in to the Mike Denness affair. He made the preposterous insinuation that Berry was acting at the ECB's behest and Wisden was an arm of the English cricket establishment. It was an outlandish insult to the editorial integrity of Wisden and betrayed a serious lack of knowledge. The April issue of WCM was printed well before the ICC meeting and Berry's essay was filed a couple of weeks before that. But conspiracy theorists hardly need an excuse.

The trouble with Indo-English cricket relations is that they are governed by deep-rooted mutual suspicion and antagonism. The fissures that run between the respective cricket establishments percolate down to the media and the public opinion shaped by it. Berry's assumption that Gavaskar's strong criticism of England's tactics was motivated by Dalmiya's favours (Berry pointed out that Gavaskar's son Rohan, not good enough for Mumbai, has been made captain of Dalmiya's home state, Bengal) was flawed because Gavaskar has been a vocal England-basher ever since he started writing. The Indian media is seriously guilty in accusing Wisden of being the ECB's stooge because Wisden is a proudly independent publishing house with a tradition of trenchant and non-conformist editorial comment and has often been critical of the ICC and the ECB.

The English cricket establishment finds Dalmiya an abominable transgressor in world cricket and it is fashionable for most English cricket writers to find a way to blame Dalmiya for most of the ills afflicting world cricket. As the master of cricket's new superpower, Dalmiya makes it his business to snub the English establishment at every available opportunity and the majority of Indian media, while being critical of Dalmiya's domestic policies, stand up to cheer him when he is putting the white man in his place.

But conspiracy theories aren't the sole preserve of the English and Indian media. Recently, a Sri Lankan paper accused Wisden Asia Cricket of playing ECB's game by running an interview with Bishan Singh Bedi who raised some serious questions over Muttiah Muralitharan's bowling action. The subsequent issue of WAC carried a statement from the head of ICC's Advisory Panel on Illegal Deliveries, Michael Holding, supporting some of the points made by Bedi on chucking and the Sri Lankan board was quick to issue a statement alleging that Holding had been misquoted by the magazine.

When Holding heard of this, he sent a damning email to the Sri Lankan Board saying that they had been "the irresponsible ones in sullying my name without verifying what I said." A copy was marked to the ICC and Holding is still waiting for the apology.

The world is complicated enough already. We can do without imaginary conspiracies.

Sambit Bal is editor of Wisden.com India and Wisden Asia Cricket magazine.

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