Should he have walked off??

On a sultry summer afternoon, the Chepauk crowd watched in stunned silence as the Master trudged back to the pavilion. Braving the oppressive heat, the thirty thousand strong crowd had come to witness the much anticipated ton of tons. Instead they were treated to a display of integrity, that makes the little man so big in stature.

However by walking off in the referral age, Sachin seems to have opened the Pandora's Box. The jury is out on the Ricky Ponting brand of cricketers who insist on waiting for the umpire’s decision.

However let us give cricket a break and move on to the other hot topic that is jostling with cricket for the prime time slot on  news channels. The  embattled Manmohan Singh government is facing a fresh barrage of corruption charges. However Manmohan Singh the batsman cum captain refuses to walk off, despite being stumped on many occasions in the political arena. Instead, he is taking refuge under the referral system of Indian democracy-”The General Elections”. He believes that his General Elections victory in 2009 is a "not out" decision by the third umpire.

However, like the cricket referrals, the elections too are not devoid of flaws. In spite of clear indictment in innumerable scams, the incumbent Prime Minister may yet again crawl to a majority, thanks to coalition politics. Also, while a bad referral decision in cricket may cost a match, our country will loose thousands of crores of the taxpayers’ money if this Manmohan Singh government remains in the office.

 Manmohan Singh, like Sachin Tendulkar has long been venerated for being a man of impeccable integrity. However his obdurate justifications of all the scams and the shielding of the scam tainted ministers have done his reputation no good. It is hard to believe that one of the sharpest brains in the country was unaware of the thousands of crores being siphoned off under his very nose. How could he be ignorant of the crores being paid to MPs to protect his government.

Still, all is not lost for him. The Rajas and Kalmadis of his government will provide him enough opportunities to walk off the political pitch without waiting for the decision to be referred to the Indian Public. I hope that next time Dr Singh will take a leaf out of Sachin's book and will leave the political arena to the Ricky Pontings of Indian politics.