N Srinivasan: Brave, or just incapable of being embarrassed?

‘We seek him here, we seek him there/ Those Frenchies seek him everywhere/ Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?/ That demmed, elusive Pimpernel.’ Those ringing lines from Emma Orczy’s 1905 adventure novel set in revolutionary France, ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’, were about a pioneering masked crusader. While the same epithet can’t be given to N Srinivasan, the International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman does share the Pimpernel’s knack of suddenly popping up in the proverbial here and there. And it was at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on Sunday that we saw him giving away the ICC World Cup trophy to the Aussies before disappearing again into the ticker tape.

Perhaps, a more apt comparison would be with another 18th-century royalist, Casanova. The former Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president is, like the Italian cad, incapable of being embarrassed — he gave away the prize, despite being mired in investigations into corruption in cricket. While the gesture may have shown that Srinivasan is a brave man who feels no shame, cricket fans at the MCG roundly made their feelings felt with the traditional sound of disapproval. No, not a roar accompanying Madame Justice née Guillotine claiming a victim, but the more discreet sound of booing a burlesque villain.