Fraught with embarrassment over interviews given by senior India wicket-keeper-batsman Wriddhiman Saha and pained at a tweet posted by him sharing a screenshot of a series of ‘insulting’ WhatsApp messages the cricketer received from a journalist, the BCCI is calling for a “thorough investigation”.
“The matter cannot be put to rest until every single detail of what Saha has said in the interview and the tweet he shared is looked into” a BCCI official said.
The BCCI intends to delve deep into the crisis and also find out if any other cricketer has gone through a similar experience. “Saha is a contracted cricketer of the BCCI. The onus is on the Board to not let its own player down. That aside, if there is any kind of a nexus at work here, one has to look into it,” say officials tracking these developments.
In his interview to ESPNCricinfo on Sunday, after he was dropped from the side, Saha said: “The biggest shock was that when I scored 61 against New Zealand in Kanpur despite being injured, Dadi (as BCCI president Sourav Ganguly is referred to), texted to congratulate me and said I didn’t need to worry about anything till he is there. Naturally, I was shocked at what I was told immediately one series after.”
The question BCCI officials are asking right now is ‘in what capacity did Ganguly give Saha any assurances on selection?’
“The Rahul Dravid-bit is understandable. He’s the national coach and may have wanted to keep his players in the loop. That’s between the coach and the players. What was the need for a BCCI official to speak with Saha and assure him of a place in the side? ‘I don’t need to worry till he’s there’. Kitni galat baat hai yeh (How wrong it is to say something like this),” official added.
BCCI will approach Saha and ask him to share the WhatsApp messages following which a forensic investigation will be called for. “If the sender of those messages indeed happens to be a journalist covering Indian cricket, the Board will take steps towards banning him,” an official said.
The Board’s bigger worry here is stemming from the fact that there could be more cricketers going through similar trauma. “It is also important to see if anybody else has gone through this,” he added.
