The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

IPL scandal
The Indian Punter League
From the outset, the IPL was about money. A code of silence ensured voices of suspicion were drowned in the hoopla over cash, girls and, of course, some cricket between the parties.
By Rohit Mahajan

It’s not really about mere three bad eggs in the BCCI, is it then, Mr Srinivasan? Narayanaswami Srinivasan isn’t likely to be polite in answering this question, for it seems that the Mumbai Police, investigating the spot-fixing scandal in the Indian Premier League, has swooped down and plucked off a rather dear egg in Srinivasan’s own nest, none other than his son-in-law, Gurunath Meiyappan.

Indeed, those in the media who did manage to reach Srinivasan for his comment on this development were not greeted with love and kindness by the man who is, for all practical purposes, the owner of the Chennai Super Kings team, apart from being the BCCI president and a member of the IPL Governing Council. A TV journalist who spoke with Srinivasan was told by the honourable BCCI president: “Shut up, just shut up. I will fix the whole lot of you.”

Fixing, clearly, is in the air, and on the mind of the multi-talented, multi-hatted Mr Srinivasan.

Over the past nine days, the Delhi Police probe into spot-fixing in the IPL has grown considerably beyond the original three bad eggs, Rajasthan Royals players S. Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila. It has grown into a terrifying avalanche, sweeping up a motley collection of cricketers, sports administrators, an umpire, actors, and starlets.

File photos: Pradeep Tewari From spot-fixing, the scope of the investigation could be increased to include match-fixing for two reasons: One, if the CEO/Team Principal (which Gurunath had been until Friday evening) is involved in betting on a match involving his team, the possibility of match-fixing can’t be ruled out. And two, if you spot-fix, say, two overs in a Twenty20 match, you practically fix the outcome of the match, too.

The police must be applauded for this great service to cricket — they have laid bare the rotting core of the IPL, which had been presented as a shining Indian invention. This also has shown what path an unregulated commercial enterprise will tread. It’s yet another reminder that capitalism will often descend into crony-capitalism if not independently audited. This is probably likelier in a society such as ours, in which traditionally fathers and uncles tend to the careers of their sons and nephews.

men of many hats
BCCI president Narayanaswami Srinivasan, his son-in-law and Chennai Super Kings team principal Gurunath Meiyappan, Rajasthan Royals player S. Sreesanth, and actor Vindoo Dara Singh.

Hardwired for corruption

Santosh Desai, social commentator and MD of consulting firm Future Brands, says the structure of the IPL made it ripe for corruption. “The express purpose of the IPL is the furtherance of certain private interests, those of the IPL team owners,” Desai says. “The ownership pattern has a maze of cross-holdings and front companies. There is no independent scrutiny. The conflict of interests is mind-boggling. N. Srinivasan is the BCCI president, IPL Governing Council member and a team owner. That’s just absurd. How can you be both the referee and an active participant?”

Desai goes on to talk about the randomness of the distribution of wealth in the IPL. Each cricketer is valued differently. “If there is a domestic player who’s a great performer but uncapped, he’ll get Rs 30 lakh,” he says. “Then you have someone like Glenn Maxwell who’ll get a million dollars. It’s a question of who wants to pay how much, for whom, and when.”

This randomness, the pervasive sense of sleaze in the IPL, and the lack of regulation make it vulnerable, and the cricketers amenable to unimaginable levels of temptation. If a bowler could get Rs 60 lakh for bowling one over in a certain manner, why would not he consider it, especially if he sees that everyone in the tournament is on the make?

Right from the first IPL in 2008, after practically every match tongues would wag — people would comment that some dropped catches looked suspicious, some strokes looked wildly improbable, even suicidal. It was possible to explain all that with the glib and tired phrase “glorious uncertainties of cricket”. It’s plain now that many of these were neither glorious, nor uncertain.

Few in India were willing to talk — none of the coaches or players. Lawrence Booth, editor of Wisden almanac, notes that he had heard from foreign coaches at the IPL that something was fishy. “I’ve heard whispers since the first tournament in 2008 — not just from other journalists who have looked into it more closely than I have, but from some of the foreign coaches,” he says.

Spot the idiot

IPL media interactions are love-fests, full of clichéd answers about the gloriousness of this tournament. Indeed, why would anyone wish to speak the truth and risk losing a million or two, in dollars, i.e. Indeed, when someone like Dale Steyn did break this rule of non-disclosure, and became one of the first cricketers to say that the emperor had no clothes, he had to apologise. “It’s only four overs a game and it was like a paid holiday,” Steyn had said after IPL-2008. He had to apologise with alacrity, and he did that by calling himself an idiot.

The problem is that IPL, involving the least challenging form of the game, is the most remunerative of all. Greed, as we’ve seen from the case of Gurunath and Srinivasan, is inimical to critical reasoning. Thus, everyone connected with the IPL — the paid commentators, columnists, even the media — is bound by a pact of silence.

“It’s like a cancer,” says Tarak Sinha, the veteran Delhi coach. “IPL has people who are hired to speak good of it. It is poison for cricket. Supporting it for money is like selling cocaine for a living.”

Sinha says that quite apart from its sleaze and corruption, IPL is hostile to the interests of India’s national team. Two months of playing, partying, travelling in near-peak Indian summer tires out players; the glamour and the money stifles ambition of becoming a regular for India and improving and doing better.

And if the BCCI is headed by someone like Srinivasan, he can manipulate the Indian cricket schedule so that the country doesn’t play a home Test match for over 18 months. Yes, India won’t play their next home Test match until October 2014. That’s incredible, yet not surprising — if any of the IPL owners and officials tell you that they have the best interests of the Indian national team in their mind, don’t believe them. Their interests are where the money is.

Bishan Singh Bedi, a former Indian captain, is admirably honest and forthright. He is not afraid to take to task great cricketers, gods to fans, like Sunil Gavaskar for being the BCCI’s paid defenders.

Another big name who, like Srinivasan, is the epitome of conflict of interests is Anil Kumble. Kumble is the president of the Karnataka State Cricket Association, is the mentor of Mumbai Indians, and runs a private player management company. Despite this, quite amazingly, he had also been put in charge of the National Cricket Academy, from where the player agents had earlier been banished by the BCCI.

Discussing all these cricketing greats moves Sarkar Talwar, former Haryana cricketer, to despair. “I shed tears at the state of cricket,” says Talwar. “Who will save Indian cricket? I can’t think of anyone. All the big names are only chasing money. I don’t want to say much, because people will think I’m saying this only because I didn’t get anything.”

All quiet on the BCCI front

Indeed, who will save Indian cricket? It’s difficult to think of anyone because the church of the BCCI is where all sorts of people congregate without animosity — where political differences of politician-administrators evaporate. Arun Jaitley of the BJP, NCP’s Sharad Pawar, Congress’s Rajeev Shukla act as one any time the BCCI’s authority is challenged.

Perhaps the answer lies with the fans, perhaps social media could help. The way Srinivasan and Gurunath attempted to rewrite history is an eye-opener. Gurunath, for five years, had been known as the team principal or “team owner”, even in articles on the website of CSK. On twitter, he called himself ‘Team Principal Chennai Super Kings’. But on Friday evening, he edited his twitter bio to remove the references to CSK. This gives a great insight into the erasure of history and creation of facts. Indeed, this is how CSK may have tried to work it out in the files too. Perhaps not familiar with how quickly the Internet bites back, or perhaps having lost their head, Gurunath and CSK tried to do it on twitter, and were exposed as liars and schemers, with a million witnesses.

When international observers look at the IPL critically, Indian fans often retaliate with viciousness, for they take great pride in the IPL as a great Indian brand. Gideon Haigh, the Australian historian and columnist, has been at the receiving end of much of such criticism in the past. Yet, he is in a position to say “I told you so”.

“On the eve of the first IPL, I said it would be rocked by a corruption scandal in five years. I was wrong: it was rocked by three, Modi being the first, the India TV sting the second,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I have great powers of prophecy. It’s simply that it couldn’t really be otherwise, human nature being what it is.”

Haigh says that in Australia, anything that jeopardises national cricket, like the IPL, is regarded with suspicion, if not resentment. IPL is eating away India’s national cricket too; sadly, it’s the BCCI itself that is undermining it, unlike the World Series Cricket of Kerry Packer of Australia in the late 1970s.

Other countries are getting affected too. Last year Kevin Pietersen created a disruption in England because of the money he was assured from the IPL; Chris Gayle has said he can’t be bothered if national cricked died; Matthew Hayden’s retirement was accelerated by an IPL injury.

Why don’t the other cricket boards do anything about losing their players to the IPL? Why don’t they outvote the BCCI? The answer, says Haigh, is simple: “Cowardice and avarice.”

Who’s got the courage? “It’s not the media. The media, with many newspapers having partnerships with IPL teams, is sold out,” says Desai. “The so called experts — Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, etc — are part of the structure. Essentially, the media is a PR outlet.”

Hope, then, rests with the cops — if they can indeed prove their case in court. That’s not really a very bright hope, but it’s a beginning, at least.

Country, anyone?
The IPL, essentially a quasi-sporting event designed to make some very rich people richer, has done one excellent service to sport. It has laid hollow the claim that sportspersons — cricketers in this case — render a great service to the country when they hit the ball with a bat.
Just after the IPL was launched in 2008, a survey by the Australian Cricketers Association revealed that over 40 per cent of the contracted Australian players would consider early retirement to play in the IPL or the now-defunct ICL or any other T20 league. What about the pride in the Baggy Green, the Australian national team's cap? Damn it, money is important, and you can't eat a cap anyway.
In India, Sachin Tendulkar has been the greatest revelation as a man whose priorities have changed with the IPL — he would rather play for Mumbai Indians, which pays him the bulk of the money he makes from cricket, than for India. This comment could be considered blasphemous, but it's not groundless. Here's why. Immediately after the 2011 World Cup, Tendulkar played 16 matches for MI. Right after the IPL, which got over on May 28 that year, India toured the West Indies from June 4. Tendulkar opted not to play for India in the West Indies because he wanted to spend time with his family.
This was a very significant step, completely undermining the contention, including made by Tendulkar himself, that sportspersons play for the country, render it service. It also undermined the notion that Test cricket is the pinnacle of cricket. Tendulkar set a dangerous precedent, putting his commercial interests before the national team's interests. What Chris Gayle and Kevin Pietersen subsequently did, explicitly putting money over the national team, was nothing different.
IPL, thus, has given the lie to all that drivel about “playing for the country” and “supremacy of Test cricket”. It has proved that money is supreme, and that even the so-called gods can't resist its lure. It's not necessarily a bad thing — Tendulkar playing for money shouldn't be a repugnant notion to all of us, who are equally mercenary, and who also trade our skills for money in different employments.

Lalit Modi's betting game
Those pining for the return of Lalit Modi to Indian cricket would do well to remember this is the man under who IPL wanted betting to be a part of your daily routine in the IPL season.
N. Srinivasan's reign at the BCCI has made people look back at the times of Modi with fondness, displaying a great deal of amnesia. This is the sign of the times we are living in — Modi is a man who has lived out of India for the past three years, defying the Indian legal establishment's efforts to investigate his role in the Foreign Exchange Management Act violations in the IPL. His passport has been revoked, he lives in London, spends his time gallivanting around Europe, yet he claims he can't come to India because of a threat to his life.
In these dark days for cricket, people who wish Modi was still heading the IPL would do well to remember that this sleazy event was his creation, though not his own brainchild: He had borrowed heavily from the now-defunct Indian Cricket League, and various sports league from across the world.
The problems of the IPL are Modi's creations; perhaps he was only better in keeping them under the wraps.
In 2009, the IPL, not content with your eyeballs, made a direct move to grab your wallet. It introduced an interactive game on its official TV channel — you were supposed to guess the number of runs scored off each ball in an over during live matches. You did that through a text message, which cost you Rs 5. It was called a game, but it was just betting by another name. There was a cap of 20 overs you could bet on; you, thus, could have ended up paying up to Rs 100 to the telephone company in one match. This money would have been shared with IPL and the broadcaster.
After this game, called 6UP, ran for a few matches, it was shelved when the then Sports Minister, MS Gill, raised serious questions about its ethics. “It is viewed as openly encouraging gambling and betting,” Gill had said. “It's disappointing to see a sports body encouraging gambling.”
One concern was that a very large proportion of cricket audiences are young people. And this game was designed to lovingly and gently introduce your 12-year-old with a cellphone to the joys of betting on sport. Lalit Modi's IPL had no qualms in doing this.