The murky, mysterious days of furtive speculation on match-fixing in cricket, like the perennial Phantom on a white horse, is back. It took two totally unrelated events as segregated as PM Manmohan Singh's blue turban and George Fernandes's moment in the October sun as the Messiah of the Missile, to bring back some not so chewing-gum memories of cricket's somber days of awful corruption.

Bald-pated mercurial opener Herschelle Gibbs, after several botched tours of India, at last summoned courage to face up to Delhi police inquisition on the Hansie Cronje bribery case of Y 2000, which had resulted in the game being brought close to a catastrophic collapse, like the Titanic. Since there were several South African players who had been made the rather magnanimous offer, it seems extremely peculiar as to why this major hullabaloo on Gibbs alone (I know he is still playing international cricket unlike the others, but so what?); and now that the King's Commission findings is fairly well documented, just exactly what new breakthroughs was really expected? Gibbs did not deliberately under-perform and neither did he receive a pecuniary windfall, so can we just move on, please? Poor Derek Crookes; he must be finding his surname a lifelong-liability, a butt of darts and barbs, for no fault of his own.

And for god's sake, since Hansie Cronje cannot confirm or repudiate any statement made about him anymore, how can anyone just take everything and anything said right now at face-value? The 2000 match-fixing saga like any soap-opera series should be declared officially closed. We can do without a re-run.

The second episode, right now running to Himalayan TRP ratings, is ICC's sanctimonious protestations on former Indian captain Mohammed Azharuddin being invited to attend the opening ceremony of BCCI's new Mumbai headquarters in a forthcoming November 4, 2006 function. I think the ICC is growing a nose like Pinocchio, revealing an unnecessary propensity to poke in uncalled for corners. If CricketNext desires to have Mohammed Azharuddin as a Brand Ambassador, that's our own private call on corporate reputation. Will it mean that Mr Malcolm Speed will black-list us as a media organisation just because they (ICC) have a hard pointed nose of a comic-book hero? And let's face it, Azhar has been punished enough, he has maintained a low-profile in cricketing issues and avoided provocations and controversies. And by the way, can we really write-off several of his extraordinary feats for India? And doesn't he deserve to be given an opportunity to be rehabilitated and one day even restored to his pristine glory perhaps? Or should we treat him like a vanquished, destroyed, condemned criminal forever?

I think the ICC is seething with impotent anger; they need the big-bucks India provides, but to do that they have to acquiesce with an equally immature lot of self-obsessed mandarins of India's cricket administration. It's a Catch-22 circumstance. But on the Azhar issue the BCCI has rightly responded by telling the ICC to take a long walk on Marine Drive.

The crucial question that everyone is conveniently ignoring to address is, does match-fixing still happen? Millions of disillusioned cricket-lovers have become bitterly cynical, unable to forget the tarnished remnants of April 2000 revelations. Even today, an irregular result sparks a national debate that overshadows parliamentary proceedings on job reservations.

For one, my own friendly driver, commenting on the dramatic collapse of the West Indies against India in the DLF Tri-Series in Kuala Lumpur last month, said, "Fixed hai, boss!".

The ghost, believe me, walks tall.