MS Dhoni invoking the spirit of ‘Scent of a Woman’ by agreeing that Gurunath Meiyappan was simply a “Cricket Enthusiast”

When MS Dhoni was asked to depose on the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2013 spot-fixing and betting scam, he attested that Gurunath Meiyappan was simply a “Cricket Enthusiast.” David Sidrat wonders whether Dhoni was inspired by a 1992 film starring Al Pacino.

Please note this is a humour article — work of pure fiction

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“I don’t know if Charlie’s silence here today is right or wrong. I’m not a judge or jury. But I can tell you this. He won’t sell anybody out to buy his future! And that, my friends, is called integrity! That’s called courage! Now that’s the stuff leaders should be made of.” So goes a passage from the climactic scene of Scent of a Woman, starring the magnificent Al Pacino.

As the captain of Chennai Super Kings (CSK), MS Dhoni was asked to depose on the IPL 2013 spot-fixing and betting scam. As an employee of India Cements, the company that owns CSK, Dhoni was put in a bit of a spot, as Meiyappan happens to be the son-in-law of N Srinivasan — then string-puller of The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and now monarch of International Cricket Council (ICC) — who also owns India Cements.

The exact interaction between Dhoni and his deposers is not known, but the crux of the matter is that Dhoni maintained that Meiyappan was neither team principal nor CEO (which, to be fair, was probably the case since Meiyappan hardly looks intellectually well-enough endowed to be either). However, the Justice Mukul Mudgal probe committee found that Meiyappan did, in fact, hold the position of team principal.

Which brings the question, should Dhoni have admitted the truth? Or was he justified, on an ethical level, of not ratting on someone? This is in fact a rather huge conundrum. On the one hand, justice ought to be served, and the guilty punished. On the other hand, if you bite the hand that feeds you, what does that make you if not a traitor?

Dhoni was put in a position from where there quite literally was no right answer. He chose not to snitch, and now could pay the price for doing so. Much like the aforementioned Charlie was in Scent of a Woman. Luckily for Charlie, he had a foulmouthed Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade —a performance that won Al Pacino the Academy Awards — in his corner.

The question, however, remains: should Dhoni be pulled up for not tattling? It is a question the Supreme Court will doubtless answer in the weeks to come.

(David Sidrat is the pen name of a would-be comedian who tries his best to be taken seriously and inadvertently fails in the process. He doesn’t quite see the irony of his life yet. He can’t figure out Twitter, and does not know what a Face Book is. He can therefore be found on neither platform)