Shamateurism at its worst

My first reaction to the news of the arrest of the East Bengal coach Subhash Bhowmick was one of befuddlement - it took a while to sink in. I wasn't listening to the news too keenly, so I thought it was bribe offered by a player desperate to make the side. And that led to some (wishful, as I was to discover later) lateral thinking - if players could afford bribes to the tune of Rs.150,000, they're probably not all that worse off; at the very least, they expect to make much more out of being in the first team. How wrong was I! It turns out that (allegedly I might add) Mr.Bhowmick, in an all-too-familiar act, was in fact just trying to extort a businessman of neat change - in his capacity as an officer of the venerable Central Excise. That leaves me even more dumbfounded - that the coach of the leading side in the nation actually doubles up as a Central Excise superintendent! No wonder our football is in the situation that it is. - NK