IPL is not clean, says Jagmohan Dalmiya. Is it a well-timed bombshell?

At a time when Indian Premier League teams are busy pondering over their roster for this year's T20 extravaganza, former Board of Control for cricket in India chief Jagmohan Dalmiya has said the cash-rich tournament needed is still not clean and mega moolah involved with cricket remain unaccounted for. In an interview to a cricket website, Dalmiya says his 12-point proposal - Operation Clean-up - mooted at the height of the IPL spot-fixing controversy, has probably been thrown out of the window by the new set of IPL governing council members.

During the peak of the IPL spot-fixing and betting controversy, the septuagenarian Dalmiya, who heads the Cricket Association of Bengal, was cleverly 'used' by the N. Srinivasan-led BCCI management. A 'compromise' candidate, Dalmiya was made interim president when Srinivasan reluctantly stepped aside as BCCI chief. In a Board, where 'deals' are made or broken depending on 'favours' given or asked for, Dalmiya sounds definitely hurt that his ideas to cleanse IPL were 'dumped' after Srinivasan won an additional year as BCCI president at the September-end AGM in Chennai.

In an interview to wisdenindia.com, Dalmiya says: "The IPL had to be cleaned up first. That was there in my suggestions. I said the IPL has to be cleaned up first and I stick to that. But I am not directly involved, so I don't know what's going on." (Read: full interview in Wisden India)

Dalmiya was widely tipped to become the IPL chairman after Rajeev Shukla quit the job in the wake of the IPL scandal. On June 10, Dalmiya's initiative to moot a plan to clean-up IPL was greeted with much fanfare. The BCCI veteran, whose vision to market cricket brought in the big bucks to the Board and ICC's coffers in the Nineties, seemed to be the man who would give IPL a new image, but only just.

In the Board's fickle politics, where equations change like the wind, Dalmiya was carefully sidelined in September last year as Srinivasan chose his blue-eyed boy and Orissa Cricket Association president Ranjib Biswal as the new IPL chairman. BCCI insiders say Dalmiya paid the price for objecting to Biswal's induction as Board treasurer. A shrewd Srinivasan kept his closest allies happy by quickly 'gifting' Biswal, a popular Team India media manager, with the top IPL role. In the bargain, one Bengal official was inducted in the IPL council.

Age may not be on his side now, but Dalmiya still remains an ambitious man. In the Wisden interview, Dalmiya's hurt at being expelled from the BCCI in 2006 on unsubstantiated charges of embezzlement, is very clear. And even if he sided with Srinivasan during the IPL crisis, Dalmiya will never forget that the Tamil Nadu strongman was one man responsible to sully his almost four-decade old career as a cricket administrator. Is this the time to strike back?

With Chennai Super Kings and its team owners under a Supreme Court scanner for betting and match-fixing allegations, Dalmiya's interview clearly hints that the BCCI is not doing enough to rid IPL's sullied image. "I do feel that things are not moving on the right path now. But we need to go deep to find out where all this money is coming from and where it is going... Somebody has to come forward and find out," said Dalmiya. Srinivasan will certainly not take kindly to these words.

Dalmiya feels the Justice Mukul Mudgal committee, appointed on October 11, 2013 to investigate IPL corruption charges against Chennai and Rajasthan Royals team owners, is dragging its feet. As per the IPL constitution, Srinivasan's Chennai Super Kings face expulsion if betting charges against his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan are proved to be correct. Meiyappan was a CSK team owner. The Mudgal committee has four months to submit its report to the apex court but Dalmiya feels it's work has been slow.

"I saw in the papers that they (the Mudgal probe panel) will come to Kolkata soon and ask questions. It takes so long? Maybe, they want to talk to me. I don't know what is going on. I haven't followed up because I am not involved. The time now is for fact finding. Find the facts and nail the culprits," says Dalmiya. If the Mudgal committee meets its deadline, the probe report should be out just before the IPL auctions scheduled on February 12-13. Chennai and Rajasthan owners will surely be on the tenterhooks and this time, Dalmiya, once the undisputed strongman of Indian cricket, will be watching closely.