Robert Mugabe: Flagrant disregard for democracy and human dignity © Getty Images

On Saturday, Robert Mugabe turned 84. By way of celebration, the president of Zimbabwe, the once-heroic figure and still-proud patron of Zimbabwe Cricket who embraced the game because it “civilises people”, staged a rally that reportedly cost £125,000. What this said about his principles, his shamelessness and his conscience is not entirely flattering. Even when Rome was burning, Emperor Nero never fiddled quite so enthusiastically.

It does not take a degree in soothsaying to imagine the reaction among the vast majority of Mugabe’s subjects, assailed at every turn as they are by AIDS, economic deprivation and a life expectancy of less than 40 years. According to international estimates, inflation recently topped 100,000% - more than 1500 times higher than in Iraq, to cite the next most-benighted populace; unemployment, according to the (admittedly not always trustworthy) CIA Factbook, stands at an estimated 80% - higher than in any nation bar Liberia and Nauru. Underpinning this is a flagrant disregard for democracy and human dignity that might have made Stalin envious. And yet still we play ball with Mugabe and his cronies.

Earlier this month I went to Liverpool University to present a paper on Basil D’Oliveira at the PSA Sport and Politics Group’s annual conference. During the ensuing Q&A I was asked whether I thought there were parallels between the Apartheid-fired events of 1968 and the current debate over Zimbabwe. After an initial hesitation, born of rampant indecision, I said I did, realising as I do so that I had finally made up my mind.

“There can be no normal sport in an abnormal society.” Thus was the stance of the South African Cricket Board during Apartheid. It remains even more applicable to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. In 1968, England’s tour of South Africa was called off because Basil D’Oliveira, a Cape Coloured in exile, was not welcome, a reflection of the Republic’s racist laws. What makes the Zimbabwe issue even worthier of our incredulity is that it is about neither skin pigmentation nor discrimination. What it is about is a denial of all human rights.

Kate Hoey, once Britain’s sports minister and now chairing the parliamentary all-party committee on Zimbabwe, recently articulated a widespread view in a letter to The Times, written in response to an article in the paper stating that “it is naïve to see Zimbabwe’s team as an extension of Mr Mugabe’s circle of patronage”. Her riposte was as firm and punishing as the throws she once executed as a world-class judo exponent. “Most of us despair that there is too little we can do to show solidarity with the millions of Zimbabweans who feel isolated, forgotten and condemned to misery. Zimbabwe Cricket is in every way an extension of the worst aspects of Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) regime. Those of us who care for Zimbabwe and cricket in particular, or human rights and sport in general, should do all we can to support any moves by the Prime Minister to ban the Zimbabwean cricket team from touring in the UK.”

It isn’t that hard to turn the picture around, or to see why President Mbeki and other African leaders persist in supporting Mugabe. It’s all propaganda. The figures are grossly exaggerated. Western objections to Zimbabwe are just another example of a refusal to accept a world order in which black Africans are both self-determining and less than eager to forgive or forget the centuries of white colonisation, subjugation and oppression. Economic sanctions victimise citizens, not politicians, which in this case makes them inherently racist. Besides, they’re only cricketers. The main problem with this sort of rationale is that Zimbabwe is, in effect, a one-party state that reportedly silences opposition by anything but fair means.

	Australian prime minister John Howard informed Cricket Australia that touring Zimbabwe was simply not on © Getty Images

As for boycotts, Kevan Gosper, the International Olympic Committee vice-president and an Australian, said the following prior to the 2003 ICC World Cup: "In suggesting he would like to see an agreement between all the countries that we not play World Cup cricket in Zimbabwe, (Australia) Prime Minister John Howard is giving new life to the dreaded sporting boycott. To do this on the basis that the issue is one of principle is misguided. It can only damage our sporting reputation. Sport is all about providing opportunities for all, particularly for the younger generations. Boycotts have no part in this generation building.” By way of underlining the IOC’s tolerance, Tomas Amos Ganda Sithole, President of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee, had just been named as the new director of the IOC’s International Cooperation and Development Department.

Gosper, who supported an Australian boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, should have known better than to perform such an obvious u-turn. But then what else can one expect of the IOC, which once led the way by banishing South Africa but whose showpiece became so prone to boycotts in the 1970s and 1980s that it now puts humanity a distant second behind money? Not that its counterparts in soccer or rugby union have any more to shout about.

Yet political demonstrations by sportspeople, from Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s “Black Power” salute at the 1968 Olympics to the recent denouncements of Beijing’s part in the horrors of Darfur, can be a powerful unifier and a persuasive tool. Such is white South Africa’s passion for ballgames, the sporting boycott, whose muscle and impetus sprang from the D’Oliveira Affair, was a significant factor in the slow death of Apartheid - as Nelson Mandela acknowledged when he expressed his gratitude to D’Oliveira. And cricket severed relations with the Republic a good deal sooner than rugby. Yet only a minority of ICC full members, all supposedly “civilised” sorts, now see playing games with Zimbabwe as beyond the pale. That England and Australia should be the most voluble might well convince cynics that this is merely a legacy of the spotlight on seizures of white farms that so dominated newspaper coverage a couple of years ago, though this aspect seldom features now.

John Howard achieved one of the few indisputably worthwhile feats of his premiership last year when he informed Cricket Australia that touring Zimbabwe was simply not on, though some believed the decision owed more to fear of violent national elections. "The Mugabe regime is behaving like the Gestapo towards its political opponents,” declared Howard. “The living standards in the country are probably the lowest of any in the world, you have an absolutely unbelievable rate of inflation. I have no doubt that if this tour goes ahead it will be an enormous boost to this grubby dictator."

The trouble with Gordon Brown’s government is the mixed messages it is sending. In January, David Milliband, the foreign secretary, said: "I think that bilateral cricket tours at the moment don't send the right message about our concern. This is something that needs to be discussed with the ECB and others.” The key word used by Milliband, interpreted the subsequent report on this very website, “is bilateral”. Roughly translated, this means that although the Labour government may effectively prohibit England from playing series against Zimbabwe, the latter would be permitted to participate in a multi-nation competition such as … well, the ICC World Twenty20. Which is due, after all, to be staged in Blighty after Zimbabwe’s scheduled tour in 2009. Any suggestion that Zimbabwe would be unwelcome for that event would almost certainly lead to those uncommonly profitable hosting rights being transferred to some other lucky country more inclined towards moral flexibility. This is, of course, utter rot of the rottenest kind. Not so much a case of having your cake and eating it as buying the entire bakery and scoffing every last crumb of the stock.

	Stuart MacGill refused to tour Zimbabwe in 2004 © Getty Images

To aggravate matters, Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office minister, told the House of Lords earlier this month that the government would not bar Zimbabwe from playing in England in 2009. Not unexpectedly, Kate Hoey was almost beside herself: "It does not seem to reflect the views of Downing Street earlier this year. It would be a travesty if we gave visas to any Zimbabwean cricket team to tour and I want to see the prime minister clarify the situation." A clarification of sorts came a few hours later, when a source close to the prime minister reaffirmed the government's stance. "We will not leave the ECB in the lurch and expect them to take the responsibility," he was quoted as saying by The Times. "We will talk to them over the next few weeks over how this is done, but we are against it and the world will know we are against it."

Now that national boards are fined for failing to fulfil their duties to the Future Tours Programme, waiting for governments to intercede has become the no-option policy of choice, a shrewd way of passing a morally-bankrupt buck. International cricket needs to reclaim the principles that eventually, after extensive and unconscionable English and Australian feet-dragging, led to South Africa being barred from official cricket in 1970.

Better yet, it needs to follow the brave lead of Stuart MacGill, who refused to tour Zimbabwe in 2004 because his conscience forbade it (others have made similar noises but without quite the same conviction). It was a conversation with Andy Flower, he revealed in a TV interview two years later, that made his mind up: "Andy said: ‘I really applaud your thinking, but it's not going to change anything. The only reason that you should pull out of this, if you are thinking in that way, is if you just don't feel comfortable going there.’ That's really how that cemented my opinion.”
 Of course he was petrified that it might have cost him his Test career. “I'd have been devastated, but I think it was still the right thing to do and I made my decision based on that.”

But is touring a nation any more morally bankrupt than hosting its purported representatives, even playing them on neutral turf? Yes, but only for those whose philosophy begins and ends with that most apathetic of mantras - see no evil, hear no evil. By realising this and acting on it, the ICC will also have the not inconsiderable satisfaction of embarrassing two sporting governing bodies that beat it for naked greed, namely FIFA and the IOC. Now THAT’S what I call the spirit of cricket.

	Chris Read: a wicketkeeper less valued for his glovework than his (in)ability to score sufficient runs © Getty Images

Predictability thy name is cricket. The build-up to the Indian Premier League player auction has attained such heights of hype, humbug, hypocrisy and hysteria, especially from ex-players in rose-tinted glass pressboxes, a visitor from Mars, or even Manhattan, might reasonably imagine it to be an event of vast significance to Planet Earth. The truth is both far more humdrum and infinitely more interesting.

So, let’s get to what Frank Zappa called the crux of the biscuit. So a few tours and Tests might have to be rearranged to accommodate a couple of events, one of which is ICC-approved and the other surely destined to fail? How can anyone who cares about the game’s future not be delighted that the upshot, properly handled, might be millions of additional apostles and disciples? Similarly, how can one not be intrigued as to the size of the slice the ICC is presumably taking from the IPL pie?

On all but one count, comparisons with the advent of Kerry Packer’s Flying Circus are surely too convenient and too ill-informed, too invidious and odious. Packer’s venture was catalytic on three counts. It demonstrated that international cricketers deserved a suitable wage and that an antique pastime could be adapted to foot the bill, principally by staging performances at sociable hours. It was also a landmark in sport’s televisual age, ultimately giving massive clout to the likes of Rupert Murdoch and hence paving the way for ventures such as IPL and ICL, both of which are merely mining an already proven seam.

If Packer can be regarded as a Marconi, Preity Zinta, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Bollywooders fronting those eight IPL consortia are equivalent to the backers of pirate radio: a necessary diversion on the road to freeing the airwaves. Yet World Series Cricket and this latest chapter in the game’s evolution are united in one significant respect: player victimisation. For Mike Procter and John Snow read Shane Bond and Chris Read.

I’m delighted Read’s participation in the ICL will earn him at least some of the rewards he missed by dint of being a man out of time, a wicketkeeper less valued for his glovework than his (in)ability to score sufficient runs. That cheque may even serve as compensation for Geoff Miller’s recent assertion that he has disqualified himself from national selection. I’m even more delighted Bond will, by the same route, elicit some tangible reward for his family to compensate them for the disgracefully callous way his New Zealand contract was terminated with such extreme prejudice. By the same token, the fact that the IPL signatories are making themselves available without fear of any such vengeful retribution does not obviously strike one as bearing much relation to fairness or justice, much less the alleged “Spirit of Cricket”.

Along with Tony Greig, Packer's key conscriptor, Procter and Snow were the litigants when World Series Cricket met the Test and County Cricket Board in the High Court 30 years ago; their successful restraint of trade case, helpfully and properly, was bankrolled by Packer. If they have any shred of honour or principle – which, admittedly, may well depend on whether or not their thunder has already been completely stolen by the IPL - the ICL organisers really ought to follow suit. If that proves unfeasible, the ICC should ensure that all punishments are rescinded.

I’m also chuffed that the players evidently see the IPL as a way of quitting the international arena as their sell-by dates approach: the better to bow out on a high, the better to spare us the waning and the whingeing, the better to stave off public boredom and allow the next generation to refresh us. It is difficult, nonetheless, not to harbour one other major misgiving.

The figures are not exactly discouraging. According to the Sunday Times, the IPL has secured £35.7m in media revenue for this year, a shade more from the sale of the eight franchises. Throw in £5.2m from title sponsorship and you have a not-unhandsome total of £77.5m: the Indian board’s revenue for 2006-07 ran to just £6m more. If this is the future, the days of 50-over ODIs may be over sooner than we’d dare have wished. But in the name of what? Turning on, or even up to, a match to see Glenn McGrath re-cross swords with Sachin Tendulkar will be all well and good, but who, beyond India, will care whether they play for Mohali or Mumbai - let alone who wins? Even in India, persuading the public to care about a team’s fortunes, that barest of necessities for a spectator sport, may prove an insuperable hurdle.

Post-Packer, it has become fashionable to declare that the future of county cricket is city cricket: for Middlesex and Surrey read London; for Warwickshire and Worcestershire read Birmingham; for Lancashire Manchester, for Yorkshire, Leeds. This may yet come to pass, and far sooner than many might fear, though the rebranding of Sussex as Sharks and Surrey as Lions has kept the tide at bay with remarkable and surprising efficiency. Internationalism, though, still counts for more in cricket than any other sport. Once barely discernible, then merely Grand Canyonesque, the gulf between national and state/county/province audiences, moreover, is now of Persian proportions. For better or worse, national identity, so increasingly and rightly irrelevant in other walks of life, remains cricket’s currency-in-chief.

Which is why the ICC should stop pussyfooting about. Why not go the whole hog? Why not formally join forces with the IPL, rebrand it as the World Cricket League, invite city-based teams representing all the major cricketing nations, enabling Australians, Sri Lankans and Indians to play side-by-side, and leave the other 46 weeks of the year free for Tests? Sadly, it would be too late for Bond and Read, but at least it would prevent further victimisation.

Who knows, it might even excise the word “burnout” from the players’ dictionary. Who knew how easily the prospect of a quick killing could reignite so many stale appetites?

	Ed Smith models the Middlesex Twenty20 kit © Middlesex CCC

A fairly frank confession coupled with a health warning. This blog thought long and hard about it, often agonisingly so, before it decided to celebrate the work of someone it regards as a mate. Which makes it a hazardous, even dangerous undertaking. On the basis that running the risk of being accused of nepotism or favouritism is marginally harder on the ego than acknowledging that a younger practitioner has just written you so far under the table you might as well take up speed-knitting, it hereby vows to carry on regardless.

In which case it may as well be blunt. Ed Smith’s newie, What Sport Tells Us About Life, is not just the best book by a Middlesex captain since Mike Brearley’s The Art of Captaincy a couple of decades ago. In my not-obviously-humble opinion it is the best ever written by a professional cricketer. Given that the competition includes Jack Fingleton’s Cricket Crisis and Peter Roebuck’s It Never Rains as well as Brearley’s magnum opus, this is no meagre accolade.

Is it any coincidence that cricket and baseball, the two ballgames that devour the most time, have been responsible for most of the worthiest conglomerations of vowels and consonants expended on sporting matters? Nope. Look at all those long stretches of days and nights we have at our disposal to observe and dissect these particular combatants. In both games, moreover, the action is surrounded by so much inaction, the thrills countered by so many longeurs, that prolonged contemplation - and its lesser sibling, extended navel-gazing - are inevitable. The hits-to-misses ratio is pretty even.

One big difference between these two sports, both of which Smith has written about fruitfully, is that successful baseballers seldom emerge from the hallowed halls of Harvard or Yale, which is probably why I cannot think of a notable one who has retired to the press box. Cricket, on the other hand, has a long and proud history of Oxford and Cambridge graduates who have turned their hands from batting and bowling to typing and waxing eloquent.

Indeed, Michael Atherton’s impending debut as the Times cricket correspondent means that coverage in the three bestselling “quality” national dailies in England this summer will be helmed by three ex-Test men and Oxbridge dons, Mike Selvey (Guardian) and Derek Pringle (Daily Telegraph) being the others. And then, of course, there’s Angus Fraser of the Independent, a bit of an oik in educational terms but still eminently capable of hitting a deadline on the nose and summing up a day’s play knowingly and judiciously. Throw in Vic Marks (Observer) and Roebuck (Sydney Morning Herald), and the only consolation for we ordinary hacks is that The Parks and Fenners are no longer unearthing world-class cricketers.

But back to another Oxbridger, namely Smith, whose writing is as clean, measured and uncluttered as his mind is questioning, broad-ranging and astute. The subtitle of this, his third book, is “Bradman’s average, Zidane’s kiss and other sporting lessons”, which gives some idea of the vast scope of topics tackled. As do the chapter titles, in spades: “The age of the amateur has passed. Worse luck”; “The curse of talent: or, what beauty queens can tell us about sport”; “Is the free market ruining sport?”; “Why luck matters - and admitting it matters even more”; “Cricket, CLR James and Marxism”; “Freud’s playground: what do Michael Jordan, Richard Wagner and Rupert Murdoch have in common?” and my favourite, “When is cheating really cheating?”

If you have read the zillion-selling Freakonomics, you may find yourself assailed by an attack of acute déjà vu. In many ways, this is sport’s answer to that remarkable book in much the same way as its title reflects that marvellous Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell’s 1980s baseball tomes Why Time Begins On Opening Day and How Life Imitates The World Series. In both cases, Smith has adapted an idea and run with it. And body-swerved, looped and feinted. And scored a try at almost every turn.

Given the current cricketing climate, the chapter on cheating seems the most pertinent to mention in detail here. “So it isn’t cheating if you are 100 per cent sure you edged it but don’t walk,” Smith reasons, “but it is cheating if you are 100 per cent sure the ball bounced but you still claim the catch.” I don’t think I’ve ever come across a pithier summary of cricket’s most regrettable double-standard.

“It’s not only a question of ‘Was he breaking the rules?’,” Smith continues, “but also ‘Is that rule sacrosanct?’ It is the unwritten constitution that exerts the stronger grip.” At which point, he launches into the still-prickly subjects of Darrell Hair and ball-tampering, and thence to the heart of the matter, a matter chockfull of cant and hypocrisy.

“To me, the debate was about the nature of the offence. Do we think ball-tampering is really that bad? We know it is banned, we know people do it, we know what the penalty is, and we have just seen the letter of the law applied on the authority of one man’s judgement. But what about the offence itself? Does it exist within purely the legal realm or does it extend into the moral realm? Is it just an everyday kind of cheating (a not really cheating type of cheating) or the full-blown thing itself?

“I come up against ball-tampering opponents quite often. (When the website Cricinfo catalogued the nine players most recently involved in ball-tampering episodes, I’d played with or against eight of them.) So, for the record, I should say that I don’t want ball-tamperers to get away with it, for two obvious reasons: first, laws are there to be policed; secondly, if the opposition stops cheating it’s more likely my side will win. But I don’t think ball-tampering ruins the spirit of the game any more than other illegalities such as throwing your bouncer, deliberately scuffing up the batting surface before bowling last, or running on the pitch to create rough for your spinners. These are all illegal, and yet they have been downgraded by social convention to merely ‘doing what you can get away with’. But Pakistan obviously disagreed. They felt that ball-tampering existed in a special category of illegality. They thought the penalty was an attack on their reputation as a team, even their honour as a nation.”

The conclusion is typical of Smith’s sense of proportion. “Drink-driving has not always existed in a special category of motoring offence … speeding may go the same way. By the same logic … if the ball-tampering rule is enforced often enough, it may become an everyday offence, just like a warning for too much appealing, or on-field ill-discipline. As some crimes are upgraded in our imagination, others are downgraded. Analysing these fluidities and inconsistencies helps us not only to understand how often moral outrage is misplaced. It may also, with some luck, help us to iron out some of the inevitable flaws in our own personal codes of conduct. That is the nature of sport, and the nature of life.”

Even if cricket is the only game in your particular town, and all bias aside, a long plunge into the depths of this singularly ambitious and challenging book is strongly, even urgently, recommended. You’ll find pearls, I promise.

	Time for more of these © Getty Images

For some of us, the only sports that count, that really hit the spot, are strictly team affairs. Those that draw on the collective spirit and - however fleetingly, in however delusory a fashion - persuade us that, contrary to Maggie Thatcher’s wicked self-fulfilling assertion, there is still such a thing as society, as community.

Utopian and fanciful as it may sound, there is evidence to back up this theory. Why else are the biggest sporting audiences, in the flesh and on the couch, generally those for baseball, cricket and sundry football and rugby codes? And no, the exclusion of Formula 1 is not an oversight. When did you last attend a Grand Prix and hear mass chants of “Go on Ferrari!”? Or, for that matter, “Give us an M, give us a small c, give us an L, give us an A, give us an R, give us an E, give us an N - come on you McLarens!”? And don’t get me started on cycling.

Several things separate cricket from other team sports, most obviously its rubbery adaptability, its refreshing 19th-century languor and the way it is held up – with varying degrees of conviction and good cause, admittedly - as a model for considerate and proper behaviour. Sure, there’s plenty of verbal abuse, but how grateful we are that dissent, sin-bins, red cards and early baths have no place in its lexicon. How thankful we are that the most famously disgraceful misdeeds in an international – Javed Miandad threatening to decapitate the provocative and equally culpable Dennis Lillee, Colin Croft shoulder-barging an umpire – both occurred the best part of three decades ago.

Nevertheless, there is one aspect in which cricket ploughs its own furrow with reckless abandon, and without so much as a scintilla of a decent excuse. And no, I’m not talking about the lack of a universally understood drug policy, or even plastering players’ nicknames on the back of their shirts (Okay, the revelation that Adam Gilchrist is known as “Churchie” did tickle a bit). No, I’m referring to substitutions.

Pinch-hitters and relief pitchers have long been part of baseball. It is now more than 40 years since the mandarins of English soccer, eventually softening after a string of FA Cup finals ruined by sides being reduced to 10 fit players, bowed to the principles of commonsense and permitted the use of substitutes. Three years later, in 1969, international rugby union, whose only passable alibi had been its supposed “amateur” status, followed suit by adopting what was known, amusingly, as “the Australian dispensation rule”. Mind you, by way of distancing themselves from that grotty, profoundly oiky, round-ball nonsense, the rugger-buggers did insist on the term “replacements”, a distinction that persists to this day. And still cricket, the most time-consuming of games, stubbornly, crassly, resists.

Instances where an injury has affected the tide of a Test do not spring all that readily to mind, I confess. Those five “absent hurt” Indians at Sabina Park in 1976; Ray Illingworth and Don Bradman falling foul of the footholds while bowling at The Oval, in 1972 and 1938 respectively; Terry Alderman coming off second-best after rugby-tackling an invading “fan” at Perth in 1982; a be-slinged Colin Cowdrey padding gingerly down the Lord’s pavilion steps for that goose-bumping climax against Frank Worrell’s West Indies in 1963. By the same token, how many hundreds of times has a bowler bowled half-fit, or a batsman taken guard with a busted finger?

The irony is two-fold. For one, it is the shorter form of the game that has experimented with fully-fledged replacements. For another, cricket’s statutes are littered with references to substitutes. However, while the 12th man is a time-honoured concession – if only to the need for refreshment, glove changes and curt messages from skipper and/or bookie - it took centuries before he was even entitled to field in the slips. Only by special dispensation [the Anglo-New Zealand dispensation?] were Bob Taylor and Bobby Parks permitted to keep wicket in Bruce French’s stead at Lord’s in 1986. For heaven’s sake, even when the 12th man does manage to secure a scorecard entry, he is credited, merely, generically and demeaningly, as “sub”.

India were lucky in Adelaide last month. Having cocked a snook at fashion by picking five specialist bowlers, RP Singh’s early exit with hamstring problems was not the blow it might normally have been, but they did fail to secure a first-innings lead after exceeding 500. Had RP been fit to bowl the 23 overs sent down by Tendulkar, Sehwag and Ganguly, in addition to the four to which he was confined, his strike-rate suggests he might have taken three wickets. More importantly perhaps, while I do not know whether he would have been fit to bat in the second innings had he been required to do so (thank heavens for Sehwag!), the very idea that a team has to bat a man or more short in the event of injury offends all notions of fair play.

And yes, I can hear the harrumphing: what if players feign injury in order to allow tactical substitutions? Well, they shouldn’t have to. What, pray, is wrong with tactical substitutions? You don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to work out that, even in a non-contact sport, the longer a game lasts, the better the chance of 1) one or more players losing form; 2) the opposition’s form and tactics mocking your selection, or 3) the weather compelling a change of approach. Flexibility on this front can only make the game a better spectacle, rewarding quality rather than luck. It will also enhance the prospects for natural justice. Hands up those who crave neither.

So, please David Morgan, sir, make it one of your first orders of business, when you take over as ICC head honcho, to address this severe and blatant shortcoming. Stamp your foot if you wish, and bang a few heads together if you must, but I entreat you to do your level best to persuade your colleagues that teams should be entitled to select a squad of substitutes for every Test, with each member permitted to bat, bowl or even mind the stumps. You know it makes sense.

Besides, consider the wider context if we extend this principle to other realms of the game. Just imagine what difference a substitution might have made to one of the most controversial decisions of recent times. As soon as it became apparent, earlier this week, that Justice John Hansen, curiously, had not been fully apprised of Harbhajan Singh’s previous Code of Conduct breaches, he could have been whisked off and replaced by someone bearing less resemblance to a puppet.