Read, rinse, repeat

With all the ruckus over Anil Kumble's perceived (and real?) conflict of interest, it is interesting to note that this is not the first time the press has gone ga-ga over the issue and neither will it be the last time they do.

Earlier in the year, Prem Panicker gave a detailed explanation of all the activities of N. Srinivasan, the current President of the BCCI.

Back in the day, there was a big brouhaha about the corruption of the Jagmohan Dalmiya regime; hosannas were sung when Dalmiya was replaced by Team Sharad Pawar (what irony!), which sought an electoral victory on the plank of introducing transparency (more irony — Pawar and his hand-picked successors have if anything been more devious, their corruption more subterranean, than anything Dalmiya ever did). The Modi regime at the IPL was deemed corrupt; it has since been replaced by the N Srinivasan regime (Chirayu Amin is nominally in-charge of the IPL, but discount that — as must be painfully evident now, all decisions whether they relate to the BCCI or the IPL emanate from the office of India Cements the Board Secretary). Come to think of it, the shuffling of the board bears parallels to the various Cabinet reshuffle exercises at the center, no? Same problem — endemic corruption. Same solution — move the corrupt around the party table, Mad Hatter  style.

Nothing much came of it then, and nothing much will come of it now.  To paraphrase Lord Alfred Tennyson:
For men may come and men may go
But conflicts of interest will go on forever.