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Shhhhhhhh! Top secret!

The Indian players are not allowed to speak to the press everyday because of security reasons, says BCCI president Raj Singh Dungarpur.

The board president says that the police had requested the board, in view of the security arrangements, not to allow the players to speak to the press every day. "A whole contingent of presspersons clamouring for comments would have made the job of the police much tougher in keeping control, therefore we acceded to their request," he added. "Due to this, we kept a press briefing only on the day before the match and on the last day,'' Raj Singh averred.

What the board president forgot was that if security was the reason, then it should have applied equally to the Pakistan side. However, captain Wasim Akram, manager Shahryar Khan and the players made themselves available to the media after play each day -- thus making something of a mockery of Dungarpur's stated reason for the press ban.

On the question of holding a meeting on the riots that broke out at the Eden Gardens on the last two days of the first Asian Test Championship match between Pakistan and India, Raj Singh said that there is not going to be any such extraordinary meeting.

"There is no plan on taking action against the Cricket Association of Bengal," he further said.

UNI

Postscript: As this story was going up, a Rediff staffer who is very familiar with Ajit Agarkar called him on the phone to enquire about his state of fitness.

The number we have for the young fast bowler had apparently been changed. So our colleague called up the BCCI office and asked for the new number.

'We can't give it out,' says Dalpat, office superintendent at the BCCI headquarters in Bombay. For why? 'Security reasons,' is the pat response.

Huh? The players can't talk to the media at the Gardens because of security reasons. Now, we can't even talk to them on the phone because of, you guessed it, security reasons?!

We have already had cricket being played, albeit for just five minutes, in an empty stadium. The way the board is going, we could shortly have a situation where the sports pages of our newspapers will not feature cricket news -- 'for security reasons'.