Where there is money, there is scandal. That is the unwritten rule of life in India. So, there should have been no surprise when the Supreme Court-appointed a committee of three former judges, led by the former Chief Justice of India, R. M. Lodha, no-balled two major IPL franchises for corrupt practices of their owners. The two teams, Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, between them have won three of the eight championships. Both stand suspended for two years.
What happens to their players, why should they forfeit fat incomes from playing in the super- rich league, are questions among a few others which might be answered in the next few days once the big boys in the parent BCCI gather their wits after absorbing the Lodha shock. Truly, nobody has hit the Indian cricket as hard as has the former CJI who has rightly taken a dim view of things in the world’s richest cricket body.
The sheer arrogance of the owners of the two franchises defied comprehension. Even when it was clear to the whole world that some of the franchise owners indulged in hanky-panky of all manner, the BCCI chose to turn the blind eye. For, in the case of CSK, Gurunath Meiyappan could bank on the protective cover of his father-in-law, N. Srinivasan, who controlled the mother body, BCCI, while part owner of RR, Raj Kundra, had the other owners to rely on. The fact that the fugitive Lalit Modi too had some close interest in the franchise, through proxies, might have also emboldened Kundra to gamble on his own team’s performance. The Lodha inquiry has banned the two gentleman for life for being associated in any way with what is traditionally called a gentleman’s game.
Now, whether cricket is no longer a gentleman’s game or Kundra and Meiyappan have forfeited the right to be called gentlemen has been made clear by justice Lodha’s report. But because cricket is a mass sport, probably the only mass sport in a country of nearly 1.3 billion people, the matter cannot be left only for cricket administrators to sort it out among themselves. Not long ago, the courts in India had bought into the self-serving claim of these life-long BCCI bosses that the national team they fielded at home and abroad was actually not a national team but a BCCI team. This way, the BCCI had been allowed to escape being penalized for a serious lapse by the highest court in the land. Since then, if matters have gone from bad to worse in the administration of the mass sport, it is partly because thanks to IPL, cricket has become a huge money-churner for everyone associated with it.
Not only players, who have become dollar-millionaires overnight thanks to IPL, but even others, including managers, commentators, administrators, etc, linked with cricket in any way have raked in big bucks on the shoulders of the popular league cricket. As for BCCI, it is now so rich that even the erstwhile movers and shakers of the world cricket in England and Australia feel obliged to play second fiddle to it. Yet, money power has neither brought any responsibility nor accountability and transparency.
The BCCI has become a closed club with the same old Dalmias and Pawars, Srinivasans and Shuklas taking turns to muck around with the future of the game. It is the organizational structure of the BCCI which bears a hard second look by someone like justice Lodha. How to rid the body of vested interests, to clean its Augean stables, how to institutionalize ways and means to spot and harness talent in the country and how to handle the enormous money the sport generates are questions which must be answered effectively.
If BCCI, by far the biggest and most powerful sporting body in the country, is democratized and professionalised, there is bound to be a similar churn in all other sporting bodies from football, hockey, tennis to judo, etc. As for the alleged vice of gambling, it is time that the law- makers came to terms with the ground reality. Instead of criminalizing gambling, a common human failing and very hard to monitor, they should try and earn precious revenue from legalizing betting. Western countries are not lacking in progress and professionalism but they have over-the-counter betting shops accepting bets openly on all manner of sports. Human nature cannot change through legislation. But legislation can exploit human nature for the common good. Legalize betting. Ban on gambling is hard to enforce. Why not make betting on sport legit and earn some money for, say, public health, education etc?
