(In the Indian sub-continent, match-fixing has ruled like an imperious king.)

We fight with impeccable ferocity over Kashmir. Our Foreign Ministers squabble amidst international spotlight. We often impertinently reject Pak-born visas, while Islamabad repeatedly snuggles into the cosy arms of our perpetual adversary China. Our Independence Day is celebrated within 24 hours of each other. Once we lived in a large undivided mass of land , in fact, the river from where our 63 year old country gets its name is in our neighbor’s  heartland. In the cacophonous streets of Manhattan it is difficult to know if the yellow cab-driver is from Peshawar or Patna and the same blurred line emerges when we look at the unbridled passionate love our respective countries share for their fanatical obsession; cricket. And as it once gain transpires with  remorseless stranglehold, we share the same ravenous appetite for even match-fixing.

As the entire world , most rightfully, trashes the sordid slush money changing hands over the latest work-in-progress novelty “ spot-fixing” the most tragic sight is that of Mohammad Amir, a strapping young lad who made a delicious mincemeat of seasoned Australian players and had the in-form hosts England reeling under his lethal spell, literally. A strange emotion actually enveloped me; Amir is actually as old as my eldest daughter despite the fact that the television screen deceptively magnifies the raw true-self. . All of 19 years, and despite being at the mature peak of teenage-hood , hugely precocious, largely inexperienced, and essentially innocent . But most importantly, always benefiting from positive guidance and continuous encouragement.  I know the sheer exhilaration on her face when she is allowed an extended hour of late-night partying with her close friends; those are times I at least momentarily feel like the world’s greatest father. Who mentored Amir, certainly not the Pakistan Cricket Board? I wonder how Amir’s parents must be feeling though seeing their youngest son’s face around a donkey’s neck , as also, his other six elder siblings without a downtown address. There is nothing sadder than the death of a sportsman at the prime of his career. And life.

Frankly, we are all spot-on in our clairvoyant statements; “ We saw it coming. Since 1994 Pakistan has ensured a staple high-fibre diet of match-fixing allegations”. Actually, perhaps barring Imran Khan and Rameez Raja and a few others, almost everyone has featured in that illustrious list including the likes of the peripatetic Wasim Akram.

President Asaf Ali Zardari may yet attribute the responsibility to non-state actors.

Young Amir’s life has been dramatically transformed forever in a wad of pound sterling notes being counted with rapacious glee in front of surreptitious cameras and a no-ball.  A miss is as good as a mile, they say.  This was  one long foot over the crease.

It seems almost laughable that one of the most brilliant charismatic skippers of his time, Hansie Cronje actually tossed his professional career  away for a paltry USD 10,000 exactly a decade ago.. The astronomical exponential growth in match fixing size reflects clearly a buoyant mafia community. And they are getting increasingly innovative. And ambitious.

Incidentally, an interesting item of great import has been rendered inconspicuous in today’s papers in the light of the celebrated Mazhar Majeed’s heroic achievements ; MS Dhoni, India’s Rs 210 crore skipper is engaged in a bitter legal tussle with his former sports agents, involving serious criminal action. Now does that ring a loud bell, or what? In the 1970’s India was obsessed about the insidious “ foreign hand”. Now the Indian hand has become a dreaded Dark Lord in the current expose as well.

There are two instant remedies I suggest to immediately stem the rot: firstly, all international cricket boards must make it mandatory that cricket players can only sign up with accredited agents with the local Boards, who pass a stringent due diligence test for qualification, which should be annually renewed after performance reviews. Currently, almost anyone can easily access young vulnerable players, and in the post-IPL age of impressionable minds, anything is possible.

Second, match fixing can be best detected by the cricket players themselves, as besides the continuous proximity from the dressing room to the team hotel, they are blessed with a sixth sense , an instinctive, intuitive prescience of things if they appear a wee bit hazy. Thus, cricket boards need to encourage whistle-blowers to raise the red flag when suspecting anything remotely unusual.  Surely, the remaining Pakistani players would have somewhere known that there was something inherently slippery going on . As I believe did the colleagues of Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja once.

The undeniable truth is that like Pakistan ( 139)  we are ranked as one of the most corrupt nations in the world ( 85) , with over USD 500 billion stashed away in Swiss banks, which has a miraculous accounting reconciliation with the estimated size of our parallel economy of the same magnitude. Voila!

And of course our own little garbage dump of a stinking backyard; the IPL mess. As the new ICC President Sharad Pawar gets on to clear the rising scum and the setting sun of the failed London Dreams , he may also consider the 50,000 MT of food-grains wasting away. Some problems are better fixed, I suppose.

Pakistan is paying the price for having comparatively too little money. And as the IPL scam has established, India for having perhaps too much.

I joined Grindlays Bank (which in Delhi our hard-core Punjabi security guard would pronounce as Grand-Lay Baank with patriotic fervor on the telephone ) as a Management Trainee in the mid-1980s. We were put up at The President hotel, Mumbai for a comprehensive course in banking operations (a three-week paid holiday). Some of my studious looking colleagues pretended as if they were born there, below those glittering chandeliers and noiseless elevators.

Frankly, I had no such silly notions. This was the first time that I had ever stayed at a five star luxury hotel, secretly thrilled that one would be sharing the same roof as probably my favorite Indian cricketers did. This time I would be there in that centrally air-conditioned space longer than my short DCM Management Trainee interview. During my stay, the President hotel must have seen the highest consumption of club sandwiches ever, which was the most tummy- satisfying and value- for- money dish that took long to consume. I hoped to catch a glimpse of the revered bunch in whites in the coffee-shop as a result. Also, where else could you get chicken, ham, fried eggs, mayonnaise and potato fries on toasted bread at the same time?

But I think I am digressing right now. Unfortunately, the cricketers usually stayed at the more up-market Taj at Apollo Bunder.

We were allowed (since we were resident of the Taj Group of hotels) to go to the happening discotheque at the pricier cousin’s hotel called 1900s. It was Bombay’s hottest night-spot. Those of us who were single and ready but had no one ready to mingle with would hang around in a stag group in an inconspicuous dark corner and order one soft drink after another every half an hour in a table for five to keep our house guest reputation intact. And while Mumbai’s crowd jived, shook and swayed away to Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody, we would be just be ogling with the expression of a professional bird-watcher.

On one such desperate occasion, I saw Imran Khan, the visiting Pakistan pace bowler.

Imran Khan truly looked like a cocky king of the jungle. Adonis looks, tight-lipped, taut masculine features, casual rock-star curls, carrying a majestic aura palpable through his serene disinterestedness at everything happening around him. He sat at the head bar, surveying the dance floor with an inscrutable expression, as he sipped his wine or beer and shook hands reluctantly with strangers whose grins broadened wide enough to give an inferiority complex to Eddie Murphy. Khan had some famous city socialites as hostesses who played Florence Nightingale to him with immaculate perfection, protecting him from star-struck PYTs.

The lanky Pathan apparently invaded several couches during his team’s cricket tour and redefined cross-border relationships. Bollywood heroines were allegedly suitably impressed by the Khan’s lethal in-swinging yorkers much more than Sunil Gavaskar. Guys being guys, we manufactured sexual innuendos like how Khan reached ‘zenith with Zeenat’ jokes. Khan’s conquests were legendary but were talked about in hush-hush tones in the absence of discarded evidence. The Indian cricketers were apparently meanwhile doing flexibility exercises and 400 m jogs under the watchful eyes of their coach , and tucking into Guajarati thalis at Samrat as a reward thereafter. There were exceptions though.

Sandeep Patil was considered to be a real Casanova sort, because in the days of 5ft plus types like Gavaskar, Gundappa Vishwanath and Syed Kirmani, he was seen as the strapping muscular broad shouldered hunk. Ravi Shastri was perceived as cricket’s Hugh Hefner because of his engagement with a Bollywood actress, rather rudely called as “Mard” Singh. After Shastri’s liaisons became public, the crowd saw him as a different kind of a ‘player’ (I suspect Yuvraj Singh is going through a similar predicament). I have never seen any cricketer being booed for no apparent reason as Shastri. Even if it rained, they blamed poor old Ravi whose gentle left-arm spinners seemed incongruously unmatched to his aggressive social existence. I guess the peripatetic Shastri is now taking his revenge via the microphone.

But the turning point was the royal Nawab of Pataudi’s tryst with glamorous actress Sharmila Tagore. In my opinion, the real romance of cricket and Bollywood received solid legitimacy with that solemn union. Others merely followed that haloed tradition in different hues.

An odd couple was Parveen Babi and left-hander Sunil Durrani. There were intense rumors about the Prince of Kolkata, Sourav Ganguly and south-based actress Nagma as well, but none got sufficiently researched enough to create a modern classic. Of late, it is only poor Yuvraj Singh who is the needle of suspicion for all naughty stuff at nocturnal hours.

Essentially, the Indian media treated off-field activities as the private sacrosanct space of a professional sportsman .Nothing wrong with that. But subsequent reports surfaced about Vinod Kambli’s mindless partying and how it jeopardized his rising career mid-way in a nasty sudden halt. That a famous former Indian captain’s susceptibilities for the glitzy night-life and associated accompaniments trapped him into inevitable disaster, leading to the dark match-fixing allegations. There were other well-known victims of sleaze. But the Indian media never comprehensively reported what should have been easily discernible to the probing eye . It was deemed a consecrated personal territory, you see. But is that how it should be? Where is our expected rectitude?

A few days ago, the Hindustan Times carried a candid, graphic confession of an IPL fashion party visitor, a first-hand report of a young cricketer playing for one of the franchises, which was to say the least, scandalous. The first-person account of the glamour-blown tyro manifested the ravenous appetite of some ‘senior cricketers’ for more than just one arm candy at a time. Isn’t it atrocious then that the BCCI looks the other way when IPL late-night bash and bang is on, but chooses to be so self-righteous over a pub brawl in the West Indies? Is that not a glaring contradiction? And are we not guilty of turning a blind eye to obvious trouble-spots?

I quote from my book 11-Triumphs Trials and Turbulence: Indian Cricket 2003-10: “A few young journalists told me about the ‘senior cricketers’ and their great fondness for extra-curricular activities when traveling (Sri Lanka seems a real hot-spot) and it sounded quite freakish. Why don’t you write about it, I asked. Are you crazy? We will be totally boycotted by the entire media fraternity”, I was told. ” And the cricketers will never talk to us again”.

The above reflects our real dilemma in the Indian media; are we being over-protective and deliberately circumspect and secretive about the fallibility of our superstars on the questionable pretext that their private life is irrelevant in the larger context of the game? That we should desist from public scrutiny of their social interactions as it will be deemed intrusive? But on the flip side, since we tom-tom our cricket heroes as role models and national paragons, shouldn’t we be more exacting in our expectations of them in all spheres of life as well?

After all, once in public life does not the margin of error for everyone reduce dramatically? Did not Shashi Tharoor have to quit his ministerial portfolio over supposed intent of profiteering? So why should the media choose to ignore certain blatant indiscretions of our hugely lionized cricketers?

Frankly, why should anyone be an exception to the rule, including coaches, cricket administrators, and the like?

A leading national daily printed a front-page story on the alleged attempt by a leading IPL luminary to deny a visa to a South African fashion model. While we heard realms on Sunanda Pushkar, no one really dug deep to unravel what appeared to be a high-handed attempt at a grotesque misuse of authority.

Tiger Woods has been almost reduced to a whimpering mouse, the greatest legend golf has ever seen. John Terry, has been stripped of the coveted captaincy. Kobe Byrant went through a nightmarish phase, and Mike Tyson’s monumental downfall began with some mischievous punches out of the boxing ring.

Why are Indian cricketers seen as perennially flawless, when it is perfectly understandable that it is human to err? Is that much exaggerated halo responsible for the public backlash that follows every time the Indians crumble? Are we responsible for positioning them as ‘Gods’ when they are all actually mere mortals with feet of clay?

There seems to be some unwritten unspoken code that makes the India media blush crimson about writing about the sexual peccadilloes of our almighty cricketers, amongst other shenanigans. I thought Gary Kirsten’s mandatory diktats on pre-requisites for prime fitness to our greenhorns could have been the appropriate opening for reporting liberation. But we are in acute discomfiture talking of matters slightly awkwardly situated, I guess.

Where do we draw the line? While we certainly do not need to have a paparazzi culture, are we guilty of actually looking the other way when we can foresee a developing problem? Do we want some of our young vulnerable stalwarts to go the Kambli way? Or the more unfortunate victims of the match-fixing scandal that destroyed some brilliant careers in their prime? Remember, in the IPL age we are talking about young, simple, lower middle class to middle class cricketers who can get dazzled by the overnight euphoria of financial riches, their new celebrity status from virtual anonymity and easy availability of fringe benefits earlier thought unattainable.

Cricket could do with a conscience. And the media may have to take its definition of being a watch-dog more seriously. At least, let us bark before we bite.

WHAT A START? MATCH-FIXING TAKES GUARD.

It was a sultry hot summer evening of April when we landed in Dhaka, the entire contingent of the new born cricket portal CricketNext.com. As the Indian Airlines flight descended in awkward jerks from a cloudless sky, I reminisced with a peculiar sense of disbelief that fateful afternoon at the Oberoi  hotel in Mumbai just a few weeks ago. Pallavi ( my wife ) and I had gone all prepared , with a heavily worked out business plan capturing  projected eyeballs, competitor analysis, on-line ad revenues, off line events,  web-casting potential, the break-even levels etc , to meet potential investors in our internet venture. The famous trio of venture capitalists included  the crème de la crème of the cash-surplus jet-set.  They were indeed a formidable combination; the reclusive, Indian stock-market Big Bull-II Ketan Parekh, telecom czar Vinay Maloo of Himachal Futuristic and the ultimate global entrepreneur the world of cricket had ever seen, Kerry Packer. The irrepressible media tycoon who showed the game of cricket the multiple colors of money. We were in august company.

At the meeting though there was only Maloo and Parekh. We had met James Packer , Kerry’s son earlier in Delhi, and he had elicited interest despite maintaining a stoic immobile face. This was our litmus test, and we waited excitably , chewing our nails , looking forward to the vast expanse that was the Arabian sea. We were all set for a marathon surgery of our financial plans, an extended  number crunching exercise, confident with our impressive array of financial ratios and the future of the world wide web in our favor. Maloo and Parekh excused themselves, saying they would like a private confabulation  before we began our formal presentation. We ordered cappuccinos and practiced deep breathing exercises but that was to be a short-lived effort .  They returned within eight minutes to be precise. “ Ok, we are on. We will invest. Just make sure that you start with a bang.” That was the fastest deal this side of the Wild West.

Parekh’s words echoed deep in my mind, as with an acute sense of edgy energy we fastened our seat belts, all ready to create a historic feat in brand-building; the first dot com to sponsor the world’s unique Asia XI versus  Rest of World XI match , featuring elite cricketers  like Sachin Tendulkar, Jacques Kallis, Mark Waugh, Ajay Jadeja,  Sourav Ganguly, Sanath Jayasuria, Michael Bevan, Anil Kumble  et al. The Asia XI was led by Pakistan’s Wasim Akram, and for the first time ever, Pakistani and Indian players wore the same colors and had a common goal. It was quite honestly an unrivalled and bold experiment. CricketNext.com  was creating a history of unparalleled sorts.

But from the moment we landed , my editorial team suddenly went into a huddle , and it seemed like a calamitous downpour was on it’s way. Hansie Cronje , the South African captain had been identified as being in a secret conversation with dubious bookies and the Delhi police suspected a betting and massive match-fixing scandal. By the time we had even reached the hotel, the mood had changed from breathless expectancy of our big inaugural world-wide match to one of growing anxiety with the likely ramifications of the betting detraction. The world of cricket had been hit by the unexpected,  shattering news of gigantic proportions; match-fixing. And one of the most elegant cricketers of our times was in the fish-net. And would you believe it, but the suspicious bookie entrapping Cronje was someone called Sanjay!  Indeed, a summer week of co-incidences! It was in this bewildering back-drop that our big-bang match exploded into the international scene.

The match  played on April 8^th 2000  itself,  was the ultimate thriller. Bevan scored an incredible 185 runs in 132 balls, but the Rest of World XI still fell short by a mere 1 run chasing 320.. As it turned out, the CricketNext.Com match was a precursor to Bangladesh attaining official Test playing status. The huge financial investment we made in the ICC Cricket Week helped us achieve a rare milestone, still unmatched, based on my limited research; Cricketnext.com received an official postage stamp in it’s honor by the government of Bangladesh , the first dot com in the world to receive the prestigious privelege , thus also giving our fledgling internet company a haloed status in that country.. And we were not even two months young.

I met the canny negotiator , the ICC President Jagmohan Dalmiya, who had engineered a profitable deal for ICC with novice-beginners like us at a hefty profit. But then those were dot com days, and so while we still felt as if we had struck a gold mine for throw-away crumbs,  the ICC thought  they had subsidized the sponsorship value  for us new kids on the block. It was a win-win as the sad old cliché goes.

I asked Dalmiya if indeed match-fixing charges would be proven, and did he have an inkling about it’s dramatic expose. Dalmiya was remarkably honest. “ We know it is happening, that is no secret. But then it is difficult to track down the culprits”. “ Why” I asked him, feeling genuinely distressed. After all, one was converting a teenage fantasy now into our future business careers. I had reason to feel disconcerted. My wife, an intelligent  hard-nosed business woman who always thought cricket was nothing but the revenge of Englishmen  for all things fast-paced and a dubious way of extending their fallen legacy was getting astronomically agitated with the sordid disclosures. Dalmiya shrugged his shoulders; “ It is tough to find evidence. And usually there is no trail”. From his demeanor one sensed that he did not like my exasperating questioning. I kept shut thereafter.

The cricketers in the Sheraton lobby were looking shocked but were studiously non-committal. The South African cricketers , in particular,  feigned ignorance and thought it was just  media creativity gone into an unrestricted  zone. One foreign cricketer thought it was a “ sub-continental conspiracy”.  Tendulkar’s late sports agent Mark Mascarenhas and Dalmiya looked like inseparable buddies and neither looked really perturbed at the disquieting disclosures. The  Bangladesh cricket officials were subservient to Dalmiya to an embarrassing degree. Despite the tectonic unmasking, I must admit that Dalmiya looked most unruffled and poised. “ We will see where the investigation leads”. One thing was apparent, the ICC President was fully aware that match-fixing was definitely happening in international cricket for quite some time. .

I was to later hear stories , at once sleazy , slimy and scurrilous ( my personal favorite alliteration) , that suddenly woke me up to the grim back-room realities of my preferred  sport. I had launched CricketNext.com because of a childhood passion , but in creating a business enterprise around it, my love for it dissipated rapidly with each passing day, with every instance of gross malpractise , shady misconduct, player immaturity and side-deals that epitomized the game. Behind the façade of  intrepid , combative and a professional cheerful bunch lay teams that were divided deeply and personal milestones, ballooning egos and power-play ruled. A few young journalists told me about the “senior cricketers” and their great fondness for extra-curricular activities when  traveling ( Sri Lanka seems a real hot-spot)  and it sounded quite freakish. “Why don’t you write about it”? I asked. “Are you crazy? We will be totally boycotted by the entire media fraternity”,  I was told. “And the cricketers will never talk to us again.”

Although we were to sponsor another Rest of World versus Asia XI match in London for the ex-British PM John Major’s  benefit for the Oval stadium in the English summer three months later , it was clear to me by then that the only way for us to mitigate the rising disillusionment with the game and the cricketers was to keep a safe distance away from getting too involved with their off-cricket field misdemeanors. The fact that our funding plans went hay-wire was perhaps a blessing in disguise, as the dot coms collapsed in an unstoppable hurricane sweep ( we just about survived) . There were too many intermediaries playing peculiar games; sports agents, media plants, TV channels, board officials, aggressive sponsors, retired cricketers and even inner camps within the team themselves. It was a different world out there, not visible on giant plasma screens. Frankly, one felt as handicapped as an opening batsman facing Malcolm Holding with no guards on; it was a trifle uneasy.

As subsequent events have since proven, it was a decision that we were not to regret.

Year: 2004
Place: Nagpur
Occasion: Third Test match between Australia and India
Series Status: ( 4 Test series) : India trailing 0 – 1
It was a hugely controversial Test match that several believe was to change erstwhile skipper Sourav Ganguly’s professional career forever. Give him a tag of a whimpering loser, a spoilt brat looking for first among equals status because of his prestigious position, who finally dropped out of the playing 11 because of a massive confrontation  with the local association honcho over the lively green grass on the 22 yard bitch of a pitch . Anyone and everyone who saw that remarkably gritty 2001 series when India made a preternatural comeback at Kolkata and then scored a wondrous  win at Chennai to eke out a brilliant series victory against Steve Waugh’s men in what is aptly considered as “ amongst the greatest Test series ever” , would have understood Ganguly’s predicament as well as his predilections.  He was the grinning triumphant captain then, but now had his back against the wall as India were struggling 0-1 with two Tests to go. A full day of rain in Chennai on the last day in the previous Test had perhaps deprived India an opportunity of leveling the series. But Nagpur was now pivotal to defend the Final Frontier from another determined assault from the Aussies or else the famed rampart risked an imminent collapse. Waugh was gone but Adam Gilchrist-Ricky Ponting looked fiercely resolute in their will-power to at last dethrone Indian garrisons in their famous backyard.

It was in this background that seemingly Ganguly literally pleaded with the big boss of Nagpur cricket to not provide India’s opponents with a huge competitive advantage by trimming excess grass to make it literally a level-playing field. . All would be lost, protested Ganguly. But the local chief was adamant, as unrelenting as the rocks of the Vindhyachal  mountain ranges.  Apparently after a furious collision with the big boss, the skipper refused to play the vital game, citing physical injury .  Those who know Sourav personally well enough and also covered the match vouch for his upper thigh strain but speculation reigned that something was seriously amiss. India lost that match by a whopping margin, catapulting in a manner pathetic , an anti-climactic result by all standards.  The Final Frontier, our proud symbol of obdurate resistance was now captured in a ruthless grip by the celebrating Australians. The Indians trooped away, head hung low , embarrassed and humiliated.

But several questions remained unanswered; just why did the local chief refuse to give the national captain his favored turf? Why ? Under normal circumstances, it is customary practise to provide favorable conditions that suit the host team, so why was an exception being made despite a personal request ? Was inner rivalry between warring camps of BCCI  responsible for India’s dismal rout in conditions instead supporting the Australians?  Wasn’t that ridiculous, self-destructive and unethical? Did the defeat of our own national team did not matter as long as political victory of one camp was assured? Can Indian cricket be trusted in the hands of such parochial petty men with no patriotic sensibilities? The local chief , the big boss was incidentally one Mr Shashank Manohar, current President of BCCI.

In my forthcoming book 11-Triumphs, Trials and Turbulence Indian Cricket 2003-10 , I have referred to this peculiar contentious  issue. Actually, I wrote it several years ago. But by  sheer coincidence, India’s noted editor of national daily Indian Express Mr Shekhar Gupta has raised the same questionable conduct of powers-that-be in his editorial column IPL baby, IPL bathwater in Indian Express of Saturday dated April 24 2010 .

An excerpt:

“It is an aside , but an important one, so let me mention it. In October 2004 when ( Jagmohan) Dalmiya was riding high mainly on India’s on-field success , and “ needed to be put in place” , the groundsman in Nagpur had produced a green-top for the India-Australia Test ( when India were trailing 0-1 with only one more Test to go ) so fast -bowler friendly , that one look at it on the morning of Day 1 and Captain Sourav Ganguly got such a stomach-ache that he couldn’t play . Of course India lost within four days, and Australia had conquered their last frontier, winning a series in India. Dalmiya was brought down a peg too. Of course Shashank Manohar’s Nagpur has not produced another wicket like that since. There isn’t very much more of a mere mortal can say on this , but on some day of reckoning a distinguished gentleman from Nagpur would have to answer a tough question or two on this.”

“This slice of our cricketing history is relevant because it tells you what a vicious political game goes on for power in the BCCI. With the rise of an all-powerful ( Sharad) Pawar , all dissent, competition, internal political challenge, democracy vanished. Along with it disappeared any semblance of checks and balances. The new cricketing establishment became a cozy, closed, exclusive club whose members stuck out together  in  a display of loyalty not expected from our political class”.

As Manohar gets down to investigating the numerous wrongdoings of IPL Commissioner-Just Suspended , perhaps it is time he started by explaining to us all why the grass was so green in his beloved city of oranges six years ago? Let the process of purging the ills that have infiltrated Indian cricket be pure. The mopping up of the dirt operation must start at home.

(As Published in The Sunday Pioneer on Sunday, May 2nd 2010)

The IPL scam is symbolic of a larger, deeper, terminal enervation of India, feels Sanjay Jha as he pitches for a drastic overhaul to rejuvenate the tarnished brand

We are a maverick freakish nation, forever skating on thin ice, circumspectly maneuvring Maoism one day, food price escalation the other, extraditing David Headley at one end but ultimately crashing headlong into a slippery subject called Sunanda Pushkar, a singular personality who abruptly threatened the world’s largest democracy. Welcome to Incredible India! Till a few weeks ago, Sunanda Pushkar would have sounded like the latest entrant into Raj Thackeray’s MNS, giving it some much needed urban respectability and gender diversity. But no, her name became an overnight bestseller, thanks to an orchestrated attempt by IPL Commissioner (the title itself bestows a peculiar power of unilateral authority) Lalit Modi to insinuate a secret cover-up for monetary gains by one of India’s dapper but controversial Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor. Sweat equity was soon the new buzzword. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was introduced via the media’s proxy medium to Ms Pushkar while attempting deft diplomatic negotiations in Washington with President Barack Obama. An Indian private corporate league tournament meant to be a summer show was snowballing into a political crisis, with the ruling party’s coalition partners allegedly having some deep, dubious, vested interests in the billion dollar plus property. Modi had waxed eloquent on the IPL’s reality TV entertainment quotient; ironically enough, he had himself become its lead performer.

As an economics post-graduate student of the early 1980s I remember reading that India’s population explosion was best explained by the fact that our able millions had produced babies because there was absence of any other form of entertainment. So perhaps unwittingly enough Modi and his august IPL colleagues have contributed to some major national priorities like enhancing per capita income by keeping the IPL matches on till close to midnight hour, and then further extending it by having fashion shows, late-night parties et al to ensure minimum risk of deviation. Maybe that is why IPL even has an entertainment tax waiver? Either way, in the IPL, cricket itself made a grand guest appearance.

By scheduling 60 matches in approximately six weeks through relentless cricket, pre-match discussions and post-match analysis on three hours of hit-and-run chase, the IPL meant to calculatedly numb the human mind into complete fuzziness; all other worldly pursuits could wait. Everything was meant to fade before Robin Uthappa’s towering sixes, Shilpa Shetty’s perennially expanding grin and Lalit Modi’s feverish autograph signing. Bollywood main releases shut down in acute nervousness, news channels were compelled to adulate Yusuf Pathan’s brutalities prior to covering the Prime Minister’s national priorities and for almost two months everything and everyone else appeared like cardboard props, the back-office inventory of the IPL juggernaut. Crowds shouted and shook, cheerleaders danced and corporate czars looked on with a smug expression at their fantasy land. Modi as usual blew his trumpet and the world genuflected in front of his “fool-proof business model” that would have made John Maynard Keynes sweat in his grave. Everything seemed like a hunky-dory joy-ride. Almost. All that Modi had to do was to let loose his irrepressible vanity van through a cocky snide innuendo on Twitter. The rest is history, so I will spare you the subsequent sordid developments which hint at arms money, tax havens, huge bribe transactions, political involvement at the highest levels, power play, and daylight violations of fundamental principles of governance. A scam appears like an understatement.

Lalit Modi is a manifestation of India’s new powerful rich. Everything is measured by commercial exploitation and political contacts; adhering to ethical standards, basic human decency and respect for the law of the land is considered being old-fashioned. Self-aggrandisement and blatant self-promotion are the dominating influences in this new enterprise. What helped his cause was the unquestioned support he received from eminent names such as Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri and others in the IPL Governing Council who have assiduously maintained a stony silence on the subject. One man literally ran amok to bring the IPL to such ridicule.

The IPL, from becoming a frivolous, flippant, fun-like distraction, instead, now raises some pertinent questions we cannot ignore: Are we becoming a morally bankrupt nation, possessing a rhinoceros’s thick hide? Are we so unaffected by such flagrant corruption, opportunism and violation of norms? A poor hungry man who steals a purse or bread is called a thief and gets lynched to death by a violent mob but the same group happily overlooks big-time swindling of tax-payers funds and alleged criminal misconduct by dark-suited well-articulated Page 3 kind of wheeler-dealers? Isn’t that our shameless double-standards on display? What else can prompt post-Independent India’s classic statement hallmarking hubris: I am still Chairman-just suspended. Imagine Satyam’s R Raju saying, I was Chairman-just jailed now.

The franchisees quietly played along in the dubious game that Modi unleashed — the racket of financial valuations. Nobody knew the exact numbers of the franchises’ financial performance in Profit & Loss (P&L) or balance-sheets but rumours were frequently dished out that some of the franchisees had not just broken even but had even become profitable. It was deliberate falsehood being spread. Franchisees were guilty of not denying them, as transparent and professional businesses do. Instead, they fuelled it. The IPL was a happy cozy club, uninterrupted over champagne celebrations. Cricket and the common man were secondary priorities.

Across the entire spectrum comprising of political parties, corporate sector, industry associations, sports federations et al, India’s biggest challenge is its leadership. In the IPL it was evidently woefully lacking. The lesser said about the sleeping Big Brother BCCI, the better. Modi thus became like a swashbuckling buccaneer, the self-styled megalomaniac who cared two hoots for anything remotely resembling sensible governance.

There were two things that perhaps gave Modi his cocooned comfort and serene umbrage: Firstly, his vast political contacts, and secondly, his belief that even if things should go horribly wrong, it would still not affect him. It is a damning statement on the abuse of office by some elected representatives in Indian Parliament. The involvement of political personalities in sports requires a serious national debate in the light of the IPL.

Will we have an IPL 4 given the unpalatable mess we are in? Assuming the IPL can be resuscitated from its current crisis, a drastic overhaul is necessitated to rejuvenate the tarnished brand.

In short, the IPL scam is symbolic of a larger, deeper, terminal enervation of India. It is alright to keep beating the war-drums about our impending domination of world economic affairs and our unstoppable consumer-labour markets, but if we don’t get our house in order that tall promise might just remain a pipe dream. The clock is ticking. And fast.

The following could be the way forward. My suggestions are:

The new IPL Commissioner Chirayu Amin has so far at least been a pleasant surprise to me .For two reasons. Firstly , because I had never heard of him before and better still because he does not seem to try hard to get heard. Its what we perhaps needed after the I Me Myself Me-Only traits of his more illustrious contrasting predecessor. Secondly, I discovered that he makes that delicious cough syrup Glycodin that as a perpetually cold-prone kid I drank with greater relish than my daily Ovaltine malt. The Benadryl generation does not know what it misses out on. But right now bothering him as much as the side effects of viral elements in the air on his  product sales will be the next edition of India’s most controversial packaged entertainment spectacle that he now presides over. The classic posture that Amin has adopted was predictable from all IPL stakeholders, “IPL 4 will be bigger and better”. But how , is the million dollar question?

Will there be an IPL 4 at all or is a temporary strategic time-out necessary before it makes a well-washed , shampooed and dry-cleaned return? Or will it just appear next April rising like the proverbial Phoenix from the ashes , buoyant and boisterous in confidence, without snooper dogs fishing for foreign exchange documents in its rather infamous dark corridors?  There are many who have posed these  questions publicly of late and most certainly  in private conversations. After all, don’t we chat cricket ceaselessly at the slightest pretext in our cricket obsessed nation ? For the die-hard fanatic who loves the boom-boom  three-hour pageant of sorts  the consternation is understandable, the alternative of watching Akshay Kumar’s slapstick comedies is understandably a foreboding proposition.  But for boring traditionalists like yours truly that is a superfluous puerile subject; does it really matter? After all, how can the absence of 45 days of summer  jamboree , an abbreviated  derivation from the great game be considered so indispensable ?  

The genuine apprehension about  IPL’s future is based on the innumerable statutory enquiries involving serious offences such as money laundering,  betting and match-fixing, manipulated bids, kickback deals, dubious cross-holdings, it is all a virtual mess.  Even fly-by-night  casinos by comparison will stand out like a pristine, pure and  professionally managed operation. At the moment, India’s  foremost investigating agencies such as the Income Tax,  Enforcement Directorate, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence are all on a hot trail of alleged misdemeanors perpetrated with casual abandon by the IPL management.  These investigations based on past experience can become highly time consuming , depending upon the convoluted nature of financial transactions that they are tracking. What if that process reveals damaging issues requiring a fresh look at the IPL operations, structure and ownership and compels a systematic  restructuring ? To expect a comprehensive and speedy resolution will be rather foolish but there is hope given that the PMO ( Prime Minister’s Office) is now following its trajectory in minute detail. 

I am proposing below a radical new-look at IPL with the prime objective of making the tournament totally transparent, player-friendly, spectator-oriented and most importantly, with global recognition and ICC backing, and yet an “Indian” Premier League title. It could be the best way to not just  salvage a smudged brand but even reanimate it and make it truly representative on a world-wide scale. 

SALVAGING IPL ( This is extracted from my article The Summer of 2010 published in The Sunday Pioneer dated May 2^nd 2010)

 My suggestions are:

1. As the first round of franchise bidding seems to have been conveniently manipulated to suit favored parties , ideally fresh franchise auctions ought to happen with terms being listed in the public domain. Clauses barring conflict of interest etc need to be incorporated and the entire selection process must be done with full disclosures in the presence of the entire IPL Governing Council.  The existing franchise owners should be given the right to re-bid or match the highest bidders in the fresh auction to retain their franchises. Essentially, they should have the first rights of refusal. Alternatively, fresh bidding should be done only for those franchises where the ownership patterns are found questionable after investigations conclude. Those who fail to reacquire their franchises must surely be knowing that all businesses come with a risk of failure.
2. The IPL Governing Council should have 11 members.
3. There should be at least 3 members representing “ other” international cricket boards on the IPL Governing Council whose players participate in the IPL or potentially could in the future.
4. The ICC ( International Cricket Council) must be represented to ensure that the tournament is conducted on international norms with presence of Anti-Corruption squads , proper drug testing , rules governing presence of extraneous humans in dug-outs and dressing rooms etc.
5. If points 3 and 4 are enacted the IPL can then request for being part of Future Tours Program  of ICC and teams can have their best players throughout the tournament . This would actually be the single most critical aspect to make the IPL brand truly “global” instead of the self-congratulatory proclamations that we keep hearing.
6. The Franchisees must nominate one amongst them to be part of the IPL Governing Council.
7. The Players Association needs to be resurrected and they should have a nominee as well. Who else can argue against that ludicrous salary cap of USD 7 mln , the abrupt sacking of Ravinder Jadeja ( by the way this poor fellow was not good enough for IPL but  is in the World Cup team ) and Gautam Gambhir getting a monetary fine for criticizing another team’s chances?
8. The BCCI should nominate 5 eminent citizens including distinguished former players with no conflict of interest issues. The IPL Governing Council will thus have a diverse Council representing all interested parties and would be collectively responsible.
9. The IPL Governing Council must set up a proper administrative machinery headed by full-time professionals and not just titular heads dancing to the tune of the Council.
10. There should be an Ombudsman-kind of position created as the eleventh member of the IPL Council with a casting vote on sensitive issues which get deadlocked.
11. There should be no salary cap on player earnings and franchises should be allowed to hire any player based on their financial capabilities and risk appetite. This will create the missing element in IPL , the absence of clear-cut heavyweight favorite teams and also give the cricketers their real commercial worth. Local players can have a fixed share of 3-4 places in the playing team.
12. Only 8 teams should play every year with the bottom two relegated out on an annual basis. This will ensure that we will not have a mindless 94 matches in 50 days. IPL should have a cap of maximum 45 days per year.
13. The IPL championships must be played on a truly league basis with no knock-out element thus rewarding the better teams for consistent performance during the six-week period. The current format is preposterous with a capital P as it makes a mockery of the league format by introducing the knock-out from the semi-finals stage itself. At most, the top two teams only should contest a finals comprising of a best of three games.

The above is not an abstract utopian recommendation but a pragmatic approach to looking at IPL as a long-term proposition, professionally managed, possessing global credentials  and respecting the ultimate shareholder ,the public of India.  I rest my case. Over to you.