Kirti Azad doesn't - unlike many other busy politicians - believe in keeping you waiting. He would rather wait for you. But then that's the way he sees himself - as a sportsman first and then a politician.

"I am a politician by choice. At heart, I remain a cricketer with all the habits of a sportsman," says the three-time Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Bihar's Darbhanga, and former member of the Indian cricket team.

I am 15 minutes late - having gone around in circles in search of his official residence in Delhi. But Azad, who's just been suspended by the BJP for "gross indiscipline and anti-party activities", is waiting for me in his small office inside a bungalow in Lutyens's Delhi.

The 57-year-old MP has kicked up a political storm, both in and outside Parliament, alleging corruption in the Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA), once headed by Arun Jaitley, now Union finance minister.

Opposition parties, particularly the Congress and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party, seized the issue, embarrassing the ruling BJP.

Denying the allegations of financial irregularities during his 13-year tenure as DDCA president, Jaitley has filed a criminal defamation case against Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders with a city court in Delhi. He has also filed a civil defamation case with the Delhi High Court.

Jaitley has not named Azad in the law suits but the BJP served the Darbhanga MP with a showcause notice, asking him to explain why he should not be expelled from the party that he joined in 1993. But Azad, son of the late Bhagwat Jha Azad, a Congress chief minister of Bihar, seems unfazed.

"It's a battle between dharma and adharma and I am fighting for dharma," he says, quoting from the Gita.

Azad, a Maithili Brahmin, is religious by nature. He has done his morning puja and is wearing a red tilak on his forehead when we meet. A thin pigtail, the kind generally seen on Hindu priests, hangs at the back of his head.

With three rings on his fingers (his ancestors were "chief astrologers" in royal courts), he defends his decision to raise the issue of corruption in the cricket body.

"I have been fighting for a cause for nine years and this is about financial irregularities at the DDCA. I have also spoken publicly against irregularities in the BCCI and IPL in the past but nobody then accused me of anti-party activities. So why now," he asks.

He points out that he has not named Jaitley, nor accused him of any wrongdoing. "If anything, I kept Jaitley ji informed of what was happening at the DDCA through letters when he was president. Then what is my crime?"

The BJP leadership rubbishes his claims. The party clearly stands by Jaitley, with few BJP leaders supporting Azad in his crusade against the cricket body.

But Azad says he is not upset that hardly anybody from the BJP - barring another MP from Bihar, Shatrughan Sinha, who called him a "hero" - has publicly supported him.

"Why should I feel hurt or anything else? I only want the truth about the DDCA to come out. Once that happens, I will be very happy," he says with a smile.

Cricket, clearly, is something he feels strongly about. As a student in Delhi's Modern School, he started playing cricket when he was barely 10 years old. He went on to play for India in 1981 and was a member of the 1983 victorious World Cup team.

The passion came in the way when he was studying history at St. Stephen's College in Delhi. It took him six years to graduate, earning his degree only in 1983, after the World Cup.

"I was rebuked by my strict father who put education before anything else in life and had asked me to finish my graduation first," he recalls.

Azad, the youngest of three brothers in a family that had no daughters for nine generations, says he did not join politics for material gain. "Politics is not a source of income for me," says the former BJP MLA from Delhi's Gole Market.

In fact, when he joined the BJP - drawn by the party's "one nation, one people and one law" outlook - Azad says his father, once a minister in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet, told him never to tell a lie or take a commission.

"As one-time MLA and three-time MP, I have followed what my father asked me to do in public life," he asserts.

Indeed, having worked for 11 years at the Steel Authority of India's Bokaro Steel Plant office in Delhi, he joined politics only when he felt "financially sound enough" - another condition that his father had set for him.

He quit his job in 1993. Strapped for cash, Azad says he sold his Delhi flat in 1996 and kept the money in a fixed deposit for his two sons' education.

"My father was sad but proud of me but my mother was heartbroken. I don't own an inch of land in Delhi and only stay in this government house as an MP," he says.

Although he has spent nearly 23 years in the BJP, his political journey in the BJP has not been smooth - far from it.

He faced problems getting a party ticket from Darbhanga in 2009 and 2014. And his wife, Poonam, who once contested the Delhi Assembly poll as a BJP candidate, was denied an Assembly ticket in 2008 and 2013.

Even his brother Yashovardhan Azad, an IPS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, was superseded as chief information commissioner in Delhi.

"Things keep happening to me and all this is more than a coincidence," he says, blaming some party leaders who, he says, have been "after" him.

There was a time when he had the blessings of the party's top leaders. He recounts how party stalwarts Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Pramod Mahajan asked him to contest from his " sasural", Darbhanga, in 1999. "They were looking for a Maithali Brahmin as a party candidate," he says.

Azad was born in Purnea, though he has lived in Delhi all his life. He visited his home state on school vacations when his father took him to his " mamarbari", near Bhagalpur, where his maternal grandfather was a judge.

"I learnt there how to relieve oneself in the fields with a lota full of water and then take a bath in a village well," he recalls with a smile.

His ties with Bihar are strong, and Azad says he has always had "good relations" with politicians from the state, irrespective of their party affiliations.

He describes Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar as an "an able administrator and a well-meaning man who has done a lot for Bihar." Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad is a "true politician with an inimitable style. He is a nice person to talk to when you meet him."

And he is very close to Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, he adds. "She is like my own didi. She used to give me bhai phota [a tilak traditionally put on a brother's forehead by a sister]. Baroma, her late mother, would cook mutton and rice for me at their Calcutta house. She still treats me to prawn curries in Delhi," Azad, Pappu to friends, says.

He stresses that political vindictiveness is not for him, and he has nothing against Bihar BJP leader Sushil Modi, who hailed Azad's suspension in a tweet.

Azad says he has responded to the party's showcause notice with documentary evidence, including four CDs.

The MP, however, does not believe that his party will expel him. But if it does, he will contest as an independent from Darbhanga, he adds.

"They call me kutumb there, son-in-law in Maithili. I am confident of winning the seat on my own. But I don't think that will ever happen. I am one of the senior members of the BJP," he points out.

What about speculation that he may join the Congress? "I am very much in the BJP at the moment. No one knows what will happen in the future. I, for one, don't think about the future," he emphasises.

As a former cricketer and a politician, he, however, adds that he has been "on speaking terms" with many political leaders, including Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Azad hints that he could have joined the Congress instead of the BJP had it not been for the fact that his father had been removed unceremoniously as Bihar chief minister in 1989.

But the situation, clearly, has changed. "I will cross the bridge when I come to it," he says.

Azad stresses that he leads a simple life - he refuses to colour his greying hair and still wears an ancient watch handed down to him by his grandfather - and is not afraid of the future. "Had I thought about the consequences of what I have done, I would not have come so far in life," he says.

But now, pushed into a corner by his own party, Azad wants to fight back. And what keeps him going, he says, is the legendary boxer, Mohammad Ali.

"Inside a ring, or outside, there is nothing wrong with going down. It is staying down that is wrong," he says, quoting Ali.