Ram Guha is a superb writer; only he can write fat volumes about our leader of yesteryear that sell in six figures. While Gandhi has become his bread-and-butter, his wine-and-cheese is cricket. It is probably his childhood love.

But he did not know what he was letting himself in for. Tired of listening to superbores in court day after day, the Supreme Court decided to clean up cricket. But it did not have the time to study cricket; it needed a brief. It asked the Justice Lodha committee to prepare it. The committee worked on it for months and came up with a report, which purported to offer a solution. Then the Supreme Court decided to call in men of the world to implement it. Someone on the bench must have been reading Ram Guha's writings on cricket, so they thought, why not put him on the implementation committee?

When I heard that Ram had accepted the appointment, I thought to myself, why on earth? I have had some experience of succumbing to a call to serve the nation: I was asked to help deal with the crisis of 1991. The crisis was child's play compared to the dirty tricks my colleagues played. After two years of trying to play with a straight bat, I resigned. At least I can take some satisfaction that the Indian economy has been free of crises and that its government has not had to go abroad with a begging bowl since we put the economy on its tracks. From what Guha has said, his experience was similar. But he stepped down much faster; so I doubt if he will have much satisfaction from his resignation, except perhaps relief that he disentangled himself from a web of improprieties. But as the reactions of the cricket community to his resignation show, what he thinks of as improprieties are par for the course in this sport - in India at any rate.

Which of them is right? Those who mock him - and whom media quote - are mostly those who have made their fortunes out of cricket. Some of them did so by being competent cricketers. If success makes one right, they can do no wrong. It is they versus a wordspinner whom Supreme Court chose because it wanted someone who was not involved in the business of cricket and hence was unbiased. That is how Ram got on the committee, together with Vinod Rai, the amiable retired government auditor, Vikram Limaye, a chartered account, and Diana Edulji, an ex-captain of the Indian women's cricket team.

Now Ram has resigned. He has publicly given a number of reasons: he could not carry the committee with him on what he considers the fundamental ailment of Indian cricket, namely conflict of interest; he kept asking without any result for inclusion of a distinguished male cricketer; the favours the BCCI showers on famous players and its neglect of the young and the undistinguished; the committee's toleration of its directives being disobeyed by the BCCI; and the replacement of the joint counsel of the committee and the BCCI (yes, they share counsel) to the Supreme Court by a lawyer politician.

Ram presumably failed because Vinod Rai did not agree with him or sabotaged him. That is between the two of them; I do not want to get into their quarrel since I do not know enough. I would here like to take up the one important point that Ram has made: that when people are wearing a number of hats, self-interest may drive them to do things that are not in the interest of national cricket. He gave the example of Sunil Gavaskar, who is a television commentator as well as the paid agent of various cricketers; it would be rational for him to give favourable publicity in his broadcasts to those cricketers who are his clients. This is a rather muted example; there have been a number of scandalous conflicts of interest where cricketers were paid by outside agents for not playing well, or for bowling a particular ball in a particular style. Nor is it confined to cricket; in politics as well as in business, people are often paid for improperly serving the interests of some people. If cricket finds a solution to the problem, it may be useful in finding the solution in other fields. One consequence of Ram's resignation is that the public got no inkling of what is his solution.

I often faced the problem in the finance ministry. For instance, when I joined, the average customs duty was something like 85 per cent, and the maximum was 350 per cent. I wanted to bring down the rates because they protected inefficient firms and prevented Indian industry from becoming internationally competitive. I put on file a proposal on how to do it: for instance, bring down duties first on goods whose domestic prices were lower than the import cost plus duty, then on goods whose domestic production was negligible, and so on. I sent the file to the minister via the chief of customs. He was thunderstruck; he could hardly let his empire of corruption crumble. So he simply locked up the file. I waited for it to travel upwards, but was removed before I could do much damage to empires like his. Some bureaucrats' role as bribe collectors was far more important than as protectors of national interest.

The problem Ram has run into is that famous cricketers are stars as well as cricketers; their ability to earn at the moment as well as in the long run depends on how brightly they can shine as stars and for how long, and maximizing long-term returns may conflict with playing well. More important, there is a huge ecosystem around cricket - television channels, publicity events and so on - that is far richer and more remunerative than cricket; cricketers want to find a niche in it.

These three things - cricket, money and name - are inseparable. The problem is, how can the pursuit of money be tied up with good cricket and good name? One way is to correlate money with name; but that is easier said than done. There will always be those who are prepared to pay under the counter; uncovering them is difficult and uncertain.

What I do think would help is to put cricket under the control of players. The country should be divided into 128 kingdoms; each should be placed under a good national player. The BCCI should make good cricket fields and stadia in each kingdom; it should give each king enough money to organize an annual tournament and create a royal team, and to buy time on television channels. The 128 royals should face off once a year in a national tournament. The tournament would generate data for league tables of captains, teams and players; these data should be used to create a national team. Only captains should speak to the media during and around any match; their soldiers should be in purdah except in times empty of any games. And - most important - there should be a national betting counter where all sorts of bets can be placed on games, players and tournaments.