Do You Have No Shame?

That particular question should be posed to Chetan Chauhan and his band of brown-nosing fools who control the affairs of The Board for Veteran Cricketers in India (BVCI). According to Chauhan, the BVCI is an organisation that aims to utilise the talents of former cricketers to provide them a means to earn a living and entertain. Very noble indeed.

Then, in this context, the decision of the BVCI to appoint Mohammad Azharuddin as captain of the India Veterans team can only be described as a cheap, ill-judged and unpatriotic publicity stunt - with no inherent semblance of nobility.

The Hindu reports that the Indian Veterans will play their Pakistani counterparts in a 3 match one-day series, feature big names of yesteryear such as Venkatesh Prasad, Manoj Prabhakar, Nayan Mongia and Chetan Chauhan, among others.

Nobody, especially not ex-cricketers, should need reminding of the circumstances around which Azharuddin was banned from participating in any official cricket matches and his record purged.

It need not, and does not, matter that he was one of the most talented players of his generation. I too was an Azharuddin fan before the match-fixing scandal broke. What matters is that he sold his soul for a few extra notes in his back pocket and he betrayed hundreds of millions of his fans. Azharuddin sold out his team mates and connived to pull the rug from under their feet. He does not possess the decency or integrity to make an honest buck and for this he should be labeled the traitor that he is.

People like Azharuddin do not deserve to rehabilitated and accepted back into society. People who attempt to do so obviously do not have the courage to call him a liar and a cheat and ostracise him for committing one of the most heinous betrayals of faith possible in life.

Chetan Chauhan and his cronies at the BVCI should be ashamed of themselves and admonished for trying to make a quick rupee by using the name of a traitor. I loathe people who feel they need to partake in an entrepreneurial undertaking that glamourises cheats and traitors, whether they be players or spectators.

All talk about how patriotic we are as a nation amounts to pure and utter dribble when our own do not have the common sense to place personal integrity and national pride above their own back pockets.

Azharuddin deserves to rot, and rot alone. Harsh, but true.