IPL controversies can't hide the fact: Cricket is dead, Long Live IPL

The Indian Premier League has it all: big money, player auctions, cheer girls, Bollywood glamour. For a few weeks now, people across India have been finding ways to leave work early to watch the latest IPL action where city teams from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and others, represented by Indian and international players, are fighting for supremacy.

Cricket has changed radically since the historic afternoon with Kapil Dev’s devils conquered a West Indian team led by Clive Lloyd at Lords in June 1983, where 183 runs were defended in a 60-overs game, with the players wearing the traditional whites.

Some of the innovations have been good – white balls, coloured clothing with names of players, third umpires, faster run rates, better fielding, stump vision, crackdown on player aggression and sledging spinners opening bowling attacks. But the T20 does more, with big money and corporate ownership –so much so that even liberals who have supported innovation in the past feel this is just not cricket.

Not long ago, Indian and world cricket was reeling under the ghost of match fixing and players’ links to bookies and the underworld. Former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin was banned for life, Hansie Cronie died in mysterious circumstances before investigations could close, while several other players including Jadeja and Mongia barely got out with a five-year ban.

The heat from controversies like the death of Bob Woolmer, Pakistan’s coach during the 2007 World Cup, and the attack on Sri Lankan players in Lahore took a great toll on the game, taking its credibility and respectability to all-time depths.

Cricket looked like it would suffer from the loss of both credibility and interest; TV viewership and sale of tickets at stadia for both One-Dayers and Tests plummeted, other sports were gaining audiences, picking up from the losses of the erstwhile game for gentlemen. Then T20 and IPL happened, created as a panacea, but perhaps actually a Frankenstein.

Big money has brought players from across all countries suddenly interested in playing for city-teams of India, much like English county cricket was the desired destination for players since the early 1980s. No more complaints of excessive heat, spinning tracks, bad infrastructure or spicy food … English, Australian, West Indian, Kiwi and South African players were packing bags, even willing to retire early from test cricket, all for a stint in the IPL.

In the key week of IPL-3, however, new controversies have pushed the game back into disrepute.

In a bid to expand the 45-day, 8-team IPL, its Commissioner Lalit Modi, wunderkind, whose brainchild has turned into cricket’s newest fad into a money-minting success, called for auctions to bring in two more new teams from next season onwards.

Enter trouble. More companies, wheeler-dealers and ‘consultants’ were on the prowl, leading to darkhorse Kochi, a growing industrial city in Kerala down south, beating the fancied Ahmedabad franchisee, backed by power majors Adani Group and Modi himself.

The two franchisees created ruckus, with Lalit Modi, known to be backing Ahmedabad, allegedly having threatened, offered bribes and got two Union Ministers to “speak” to the Kochi franchisee owners to back off. The Kochi team owners claim Modi offered them $50 million to leave the auction.

They returned the favor, having controversy-lover External Affairs Minister of State, Shashi Tharoor, who failed as a contestant to the United Nations Secretary-General’s post, to speak and convince Lalit Modi to let Kochi team’s auction win prevail.

Modi broke the controversy into media limelight, ironically, on twitter, alleging a shady deal between Tharoor, his friend from Dubai, Ms Sunanda Pushkar, who received ‘sweat equity’ worth millions from Kochi in return for Tharoor’s involvement.

Tharoor hit back, calling Modi a fixer who did not like Kochi winning the auction, justifying his own role as being motivated by a desire to serve his constituency and develop his State.

Tharoor in turn also got Modi exposed in the media with planted stories of Modi's college day drugs and robbery escapades in the US, snaps of him with an international model and stakes owned by Modi's relatives and friends in various IPL teams. Accusations of bribes and threats from the underworld and Union Ministers alike flew both ways for two days in full media glare.

On early count, at least three Union Ministers are involved, of which, Shashi Tharoor looks like a shady dealer whose proxy gained free equity in the new franchisee, even as a purported call from the dreaded Dawood gang to kill Tharoor is doing rounds.

The opposition has called for Tharoor’s resignation, stalling the Parliament, even as the Central government has started Income Tax raids on Modi’s offices and even some of the franchisees. Suddenly, IPL matches were not half as exciting as the war of words and nerves, involving Union Ministers, underworld, Bollywood, proxies and international models… and the ‘feral’ TRP-starved media playing referee.

In quick developments, Shashi Tharoor, after maintaining that he was just a 'mentor' for the beleaguered Kochi team and having no financial benefits, resigned on the insistence of the Prime Minsiter. This, after this supposed proxy Sunanda "sacrificed" her sweat equity and resigned from the position.

A truce might yet be worked out so that the goose laying golden eggs may be saved, hard bargained negotiations might lead to a few ego-bruises, but fake smiles and pseudo handshakes before cameras might help bury the volcano beneath the carpet with the illusion of a happy ending. But not without it all adding to a sad realization, cricket is dead, long live the IPL.