‘If your b*@&ds can’t join their two hands, then what can I do?’ This was the South African captain Hansie Cronje explaining to bookie Sanjeev Chawla why he couldn’t deliver on their match-fixing deal after a game in the infamous 2000 India-South Africa series. It was that ODI where Herschelle Gibbs was to score below 20 but ended up hitting much more. Hansie, to save face, was blaming the Indian fielders for dropping catches. He was implying that Gibbs had done his bit and had he been caught, the match would take the course the syndicate had decided. Neither knew Delhi Police were tapping their phones. More than two decades later, retired cop Pradeep Srivastava — who worked the Cronje case as a young DCP — repeats the line and chuckles at “b*”@#&_ds”. This was a few years back, when a group of Express reporters, working on Chawla’s profile after he was forced to return to India from London, had been invited by Srivastava to his home. It was early evening. The frame of the …