File photo of cheergirls during one of the IPL 6 matches. (BCCI Image)Robert Craddock chronicles seedy side beneath glitz and glamour if Indian Premier League
- News Limited newspapers
- May 18, 2013
Beneath the glitz, glamour and hype so plastic you could wrap your sandwiches in it, the Indian Premier League is a smouldering cesspit.
The sunniest of places for the shadiest people.
They come out after dark at the notorious IPL parties where all involved can pluck a girl, a drink or maybe something a little stronger if that is your wish.
The lights are dim, the music loud, the drinks strong, cold and plentiful. Famous faces flash past in the shadows.
It was here that the first tentacles of illegal bookmakers reportedly offered their poisoned fruit to young fast bowler Sreesanth who, with two of his Rajasthan Royals teammates, faces a life of ruin after being caught spot-fixing.
What mindless fools they have been.
Sreesanth's annual IPL salary of $681,000 could have bought him three or four large houses in his home region of Kerala but he wanted more. In these days of rampant indulgence, enough is never enough.
Australian coaches never enjoy it when their players go to the IPL because they often return fat.
Weeks of sloppy training sessions, reckless eating habits and lying around five star hotel rooms secluded from the madhouse world is no way to get a player in peak condition.
Very few Australian cricketers have gone to the Indian Premier League have come back better cricketers.
Click here to see how Aussie batsman David Warner responded to this article.
Old heads like Adam Gilchrist - who has earnt more than $7 million in the IPL and is still playing - can get in an out without being swayed but there is mounting concern that one young Australian player in India is behaving with increased recklessness as his moral radar scrambles with a large pay cheque which far outstrips his ability.
If you or I stay at a hotel and our rooms are paid for we generally still have to pick up incidentals like room service when we check out.
In some IPL franchises stars just refuse to pay these bills. When the bus arrives they jump on and never look back.
The bills eventually find their way to the franchise accountant who mops up the mess.
It is all part of rock star culture of the IPL, the same culture that saw batsman Luke Pomersbach manoeuvred out of jail and home scott free after a settlement despite belting a man so hard he broke his hand.
The apprehension of three players for spot-fixing may have shocked the rest of the world but those least surprised were those who have played in the competition.
The whispers have been around for years that there has been dodgy dealings galore in the IPL with stories about betting exotics as extreme as how many players would wear sun glasses.
Things were even worse in the IPL's predecessor, the Indian Cricket League, so corrupt that Australian players who played it jokingly refer to it as the Indian Corruption League.
There are many cricket competitions in India that Australians have never ever heard of which are the subject of betting and of course, corruption.
IPL officials have been infamously slow to take proper anti-corruption measures and their reticence has always been seen as a sign that they were scared of what they would find.
In the competition's first year in 2008 the IPL gave the ICC's anti-corruption unit just one week to get organised for the competition.
In 2009 when the tournament was in South Africa they didn't even bother having a corruption unit and there were reportedly more corrupt dealings than one of those Kenya investment schemes you get invited to join over the phone at home, normally just when you are putting the kids down.
Since then the ICC's anti-corruption unit has been involved but last year the IPL decided to appoint their own corruption unit to govern things.
The IPL saw it as a boost for their integrity. Many others saw it a bit like putting the fattest father at your local school fete in charge of the donut stall.
Cricket corruption is hard to detect in India because all deals are done in cash. There is no transaction trail and no footage of a man coming out of a TAB.
Players take risks with the confidence of knowing the ICC's corruption unit have had about as much success finding criminals as Mr Magoo would have spotting a flea in a featherbed.
They have barely a decent scalp to show in their 12 years existence and when the Indian police were closing in on the three Royals players cricket's anti-corruption task force was fumbling along in the dark ... again.
http://www.foxsports.com.au/cricket/indian-premier-league/robert-craddock-chronicles-seedy-side-beneath-glitz-and-glamour-if-indian-premier-league/story-fn50nhzf-1226645820516#.UaYaHdIwevc
The Board of Control of India: All hail the fearsome BCCI
Lakshmi Chaudhry and Sandip Roy
Of the many revelations offered by the latest IPL saga, the most startling is the awesome might of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The most jaded aam aadmi cannot help but marvel at its naked, unassailable power. It sails serenely above the law, immune from the petty considerations of propriety, protected by its magical power to alter reality, and command cowed obedience — much like its leader, N Srinivasan, the real Big Boss of India. A man so fearsome or hallowed that neitherNarendra Modi nor Rahul Gandhi has dared speak against him.
The spot-fixing scandal has revealed our nation’s ultimate secret: He who rules cricket, rules above all.
Reuters
Kremlin rules: The Berlin Wall has fallen, Soviet Union is a distant memory, but the BCCI Politburo is well and alive. The Mahendra Singh Dhoni press conference had all the trappings of a Communist-era event: The star athlete making a media appearance with the de rigeur KGB minder in place to ensure no one, including the reporters, stepped out of line.
First came the unprecedented diktat issued by the BCCI ‘minder’: “This is a prequel conference of the Champions Trophy. NO other questions will be answered,” followed by a scene torn from an old Cold War movie:
So what do you have to say about the spot-fixing scandal? Immediately, the BCCI official shouts: Next question. Dhoni smiles but stays silent. He is dutifully toeing the BCCI’s line. Another question. More silence from Dhoni… a steely glare and more shouting from the BCCI official…“There is a crisis in Indian cricket. You didn’t attend the last two CSK press conferences. Now you are here. Why don’t you have anything to say? Don’t you have anything to say to the people of this country?” It was an impassioned plea. Unfortunately, didn’t work. In came the BCCI official: Next question.
But who can blame Dhoni for keeping mum. At least, Soviet athletes could defect to another country. But there is no escape from the apparatchiks of the BCCI whose diktat of silence is absolute. No one has the temerity to flout it, be it Dhoni or Arun Jaitley. Only the estranged gay son dares incur the wrath of the other Stalin in Chennai.
The National Party of Full Employment: “They come out after dark at the notoriousIPL parties where all involved can pluck a girl, a drink or maybe something a little stronger if that is your wish,” writes Robert Craddock, chronicling the ‘seedy side’ of IPL. “It was here that the first tentacles of illegal bookmakers reportedly offered their poisoned fruit to young fast bowler Sreesanth…”
For all Craddock’s colourful prose, the more mundane truth is this: IPL parties are giant job fairs. The booze and five-star locations are just window dressing for an event designed to allow its attendees to find gainful employment, be it greedy cricketers, seedy bookies, pretty models, high end hookers, or wealthy fixers.
If one part of BCCI’s power lies in its leader’s considerable powers of intimidation, the other can be attributed to its generous largesse. UPA sops like NREGA pale in comparison to the opportunities created by the board’s flagship creation. The richest cricket body in the world allows everyone to move on up, be it a Bollywood nobody, former Kingfisher air hostess, son of a chicken feed supplier, second-rate cricketer, or the son-in-law of its own chief. And let’s not forget the big winners in this free market circus: team owners, star cricketers, and politicians. Everyone has gained, and therefore has something to lose. There are many things money can’t buy. Silence isn’t one of them.
Family bijness, Godfather style. The family connection is the connection that really matters in India whether you are Robert Vadra or Ranbir Kapoor. So it’s no surprise that the BCCI too is a ‘family values’ organisation where marrying into the right clan can make you an IPL team owner.
But the same father-in-law who anointed him head honcho of a cricket team has been quick to throw him overboard, downgrading him in a flash to a nobody who “never visited the CSK office”. As CricketCountry‘s VV Rao points out, Srinivasan’s bravura performance at his press conference demonstrated to “Pawan Kumar Bansal what a fool he was to resign because a nephew allegedly made some money.”
Unlike politics, in the Mi Familia, business always comes before blood. As with the Corleones, ties that bind can be ruthlessly cut when required. Like poor old Fredo, Gurunath Meiyappan has become a liability — though he is certain to meet a kinder fate. For unlike Michael or Vito, the all-powerful Srinivasan has no need to ‘disappear’ witnesses or bribe juries. All he needs to rewrite evidence is the ‘delete’ button. Voila! Twitter handle bios transmute, names disappear from company websites.
One month ago, Gurunath Meiyappan was one of the most powerful men at Chennai Super Kings. The Mr Big who bid at the IPL auctions and told the Hindu in 2011 “Before every game, Dhoni, (Stephen) Fleming and I exchange our elevens at 5.45 pm (for the night matches).” Today, he is a “cricket enthusiast” and an “honorary member of team management.”
Now the poor Mumbai police are running in circles reduced to recovering old business cards and IPL auction documents to prove what everyone already knows: Gurunath Meiyappan was owner and Team Principal of the Chennai Super Kings.
Government of national unity. Forget NDA or UPA or even the Third Front. Only the BCCI can give us a government of true national unity in 2014. The 30 men who make up the board — MPs, CMs, ministers, PM-aspirants from across the political spectrum — are finally united in silent pusillanimity. The loquacious Narendra Modi, who as TOI points out, has sent 48 tweets sinceMay 16 — not once referred to the scandal or demanded Srinivasan’s ouster. The erudite Arun Jaitley has gone largely mum. Farooq Abdullah finally spoke, only to defend him as “honourable.” Jyotiraditya Scindia did politely request Srinivasan to step down, but with almost sheepish deference”
Let me say this that I am not assuming or saying that anyone is guilty. But considering the environment that is around cricket today, considering the fact that we do need to cleanse the sport in every single meaning of the word, I do believe that it would be in the fitness of things if Mr Srinivasan did step aside until this matter reached a conclusive end in terms of an enquiry. If he and his family members, or rather his son-in-law, is absolved then surely he can come back.
Here’s a man who can make even Modi jealous. Srinivasan is far more aggressive, unapologetic, and polarising, yet everyone is quietly lining up behind him. No politician has raised questions about his leadership style, or made demands for an apology. Here’s a man who shows unflappable calm even as Arnab Goswami is baying for his head.
“Srinivasan seems to have capacity to bring Cong and BJP together on something. More than MMS managed in 9 yrs. Why not make him PM in 2014?” tweeted @chatter99. Why not, indeed? His anointment would only confirm what we now know: There is one ‘C’ too many in BCCI. Maybe it’s time to shed the figleaf and call it what it is: The Board of Control of India.
http://www.firstpost.com/sports/the-board-of-control-of-india-all-hail-the-fearsome-bcci-825691.html