The IPL - From circus to scandal

My last post was when the Little Master got his limited overs double hundred. The IPL tamasha began after that. I generally desist from writing about the IPL as one has to really struggle to derive genuine cricketing insights from the never ending flurry of sixes and fours. And after three seasons of trying to banish even such kind of cricketing action off the news pages and replace it with a concoction of big business and Bollywood, the IPL has succeeded this time.

All this has had a sense of inevitability to it. With the value of the IPL increasing manifold - to the extent that the television broadcaster was arm twisted into agreeing to pay more than one and a half times the amount originally negotiated for TV rights – it was only a matter of time before someone powerful who could not have his share of the pie was rattled enough to wreak a wave of vendetta upon the shady dealings behind the scenes. Note how the entire media has been turned upon Lalit Modi (as if he was some all-powerful one man army who went around sparing none). He is no angel, by any stretch of imagination, but to insinuate that he was the only one responsible for this mess is to cast a doubt upon the integrity as well as the competence of the others involved in the BCCI, especially those that form the IPL Governing Council.

There are two possibilities, theoretically. One, Modi was given a blanket power of attorney by the BCCI to do what he thought fit. Which then means that there was no need to have a Governing Council in the first place, if the dashing ‘Commissioner’ was able to manage the IPL all by himself. Which also gives rise to the question that what earth-shattering event has now occurred that the BCCI has turned upon its one time shining knight, if it chose to ignore his misdemeanors till now? Two, Modi tried his best to run the show all alone and cared two hoots about others, but the BCCI decided to rightly rein him in. If that is the case, pray what took them so many years? It is clear that he has rattled someone really powerful, someone who then lost no time in letting the entire official machinery loose on him like bloodhounds on a hot trail. The entire drama reeks of vendetta.

The media coverage has been achingly biased and motivated, seeking to influence opinion rather than inform. Modi and Sashi Tharoor have become convenient scapegoats whereas the roles of the big fish have been hugely ignored. The public has expectedly lapped up the news, damning Modi and ridiculing Tharoor. It is not hard to see why. Everybody loves to hate Modi for he does not conform to the public image of an administrator. He is not content with maneuvering behind the scenes while presenting a holier-than-thou face to the public. He is in your face, brash, acerbic, calls a spade a spade and has succeeded in making more enemies than friends. Tharoor dared to almost publicly support his girlfriend. Indian politicians are supposed to have very private love lives. They are not supposed to be on Twitter. We are okay if an agriculture minister says that he is not responsible for astronomical food prices. We are okay if a state Chief Minister has been convicted in a murder case. But Tharoor, he dared to tweet. This was the last straw after having called economy class as ‘cattle class’. He had to go, right?

It is a sad reflection on the state of our society. We have managed to reduce even corruption, nepotism and the like to their lowest levels. All things murky are tolerated, even encouraged, as long as the ones calling the shots are raking it in. The moment a perceived ‘outsider’ – in this case, the Rendezvous combine that won the Kochi bid, alongwith Tharoor – wins the next round of the same dirty game, playing by the same dirty rules, all hell breaks loose. It was only yesterday that the IPL was being touted as India’s answer to the NBA and the EPL. Overnight, it has transformed into a hotbed of allegations, counter allegations, investigations and witch hunts. There are even self-righteous calls of ‘banning’ the IPL by hypocritical politicians whose career is littered with scandals the size of which easily dwarfs the IPL fracas.

As a society, we thoroughly deserve what we have today. We deserve Sharad Pawar. We deserve Lalu Prasad. We deserve Shibu Soren. We deserve the game of political cat and mouse that the Indian Premier League has become. But spare a thought for the once gentleman’s game. It certainly does not deserve all this. What have we reduced it to?