There’s no sympathy for Modi

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Bridgetown: Except for the Inderjit Singh Bindra-headed Punjab Cricket Association, nobody in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is shedding tears for Lalit Kumar Modi.

There’s no sympathy among the cricket fraternity gathered in the West Indies for the World Twenty20, either.

In fact, some of the Pakistan players are “happy” that the man who “humiliated” them in the last auction of the Indian Premier League (IPL), in January, has fallen on such bad times.

Modi, then the IPL’s chairman and commissioner, included the Pakistanis in the auction, yet not one was bought by any of the eight franchises. That was strange, to say the least, and it left the Shahid Afridis fuming.

“Nobody believes that Modi wouldn’t have known what was going to happen... He should have taken us off the auction list... Hamare saath zyatti huyi... We were humiliated for no fault of ours, except being from Pakistan,” one of the seniors told The Telegraph on Saturday.

Modi has, of course, been suspended from all posts by the BCCI.

Another senior from Pakistan wanted to know about the “style of functioning” of the IPL’s interim chief, industrialist Chirayu Amin.

“I’d never heard of him... What’s his style of functioning? Are we going to feature in the next auction? Don’t fans in India want to see us? Hamme alag rakh ke IPL nahin chalana chahiye, let the governments sort things out,” the other senior said.

The Afridis have featured in only the first edition of the IPL, in 2008. The pitch queered for them after Mumbai’s 26/11.

Incidentally, the second showcause on Modi, for trying to destroy English (and, by extension, world) cricket, has caused quite a flutter here.

“Modi just lost it,” was a common enough reaction, while others feel that the IPL would be a “much better property” after this cleansing.

One hopes so.