Exit Lalit Modi

The Board for Control of Cricket in India has shown the grand impresario of the Indian Premier League the door. With this move, it hopes the controversy over IPL would settle down, too. It should not. The entire IPL act needs to be cleaned up.

Indians love cricket and that love serves as the basis for a whole lot of commercial activity spanning advertising, broadcast rights, event management, merchandising, etc. Completely underhand measures have been adopted by some, closely linked to IPL organisers and their cronies, to corner as large a share of the revenue generated by these activities as possible, in the entire organisation of the League. And the BCCI cannot disclaim responsibility.

Let us not forget that the IPL got a monopoly on league cricket in India because BCCI got the international cricket body to disqualify players who took part in the Indian Cricket League, a league experiment that took off without BCCI’s sponsorship. Now, this was armtwisting and an exercise in monopoly, and against the principles of competition, blocking free entry into the market for commercial cricket. BCCI owns, benefits from and supports IPL. So whatever IPL did had the implicit or explicit support of BCCI, which comprises leading politicians and businessmen (and suffers some people associated with the game as well, to be fair to the body).

The chargesheet against Modi is revealing, including as it does rigged bids for team franchises, payoffs for securing telecast lights, misappropriation of funds, non-disclosure of interests in teams, and so on. These are damning charges. But how did Modi manage to get away with all these till his tweet against Shashi Tharoor?

Cricket lovers deserve better. The League they love to watch must be rid of sleaze. Team ownership should become transparent, as also the allotment of franchises. Above all, integrity of the game of cricket must remain shielded from the shadow of suspicion, not to speak of the grime of match fixing scandal. So far, the BCCI has failed in its supervisory responsibility. Who’s holding the political maestros of BCCI to account?