AFVOA Newsletter of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 01 / 2021 Page 60 of 123 1 Con Artists on the Cricket Field Brig V A Subramanyam Genre: Reflections heaters are cowards that are tempted to chase the fantasy of what could be, instead of courageously addressing their own self-destructive behaviour and cultivating what is. ~ Unknown The game of cricket has been synonymous with fairness. When something wrong is done by someone, it is not uncommon to quote “that is not cricket.” But in the past few years much has happened in the cricketing arena which has strictly not been “cricket”. There have been match fixing, ball tampering, a host of unsavoury events tarnishing the good name of cricket. But what recently happened in South Africa by the Australians really takes the cake. Mahabharata is well known – both in India as well as the rest of the world. Gurcharan Das highlighted many aspects of the epic in his monumental book ‘the Difficulty of being Good’, where he drew parallels to present day behaviour from events that took place in that era. It would be interesting to view this particular incident – as though it occurred during the era of the Mahabharata. Dharmaraja was known as just and adhering to the tenets of dharma, whereas Duryodhana never hesitated to deviate from dharma if it suited him. It is believed that once their guru – Dronacharya called both of them to test their adherence to dharma. Let us assume that this was one such incident. Section 6 – Memoirs C