A player of ODI captain Mithali Raj’s stature will always have an emotional (maybe, at times, even irrational) band of followers, but in her war with head coach Ramesh Powar, the latter appears to be on a strong wicket.

First, of course, Mithali’s tweet on Thursday morning: “I’m deeply saddened & hurt by the aspersions cast on me. My commitment to the game & 20 yrs of playing for my country. The hard work, sweat in vain. Today, my patriotism doubted, my skill set questioned & all the mud-slinging — it’s the darkest day of my life. May God give strength.”

Plenty of emotion there, but Mithali fired the first shots by tearing into Powar and Supreme Court-appointed administrator Diana Edulji.

That was on Monday and Mithali’s nearly 2,000-word email to the Board of Control for Cricket in India was leaked the very next day.

Powar’s version, in the form of his report to the Board, was accessed by The Telegraph on Wednesday.

Actually, Powar’s report has raised issues which call for an explanation from Mithali.

A sympathy-generating tweet alone won’t do.

Powar, after all, has mentioned that manager Trupti Bhattacharya, fielding coach Biju George and video analyst Pushkar Sawant were either directly spoken to by Mithali or word was passed on to them on her behalf. All of which was communicated to the head coach.

Intriguing has been the silence of Syed Saba Karim, GM-Cricket Operations of the Board, who’d been briefed during the just-ended World T20.

Why did Saba Karim not inform the two Administrators (chairman Vinod Rai being the other) or the three office-bearers of the Board about the major crisis in the West Indies?

Have people been playing games and, in the process, hurting India’s cricket? Given the events of the past few weeks, one simply has to ask that.

Chandra Kishore Khanna, Amitabh Choudhary and Anirudh Chaudhry are the office-bearers. Will they answer?