A Game of Passion, a Game of Corruption

Photo- special arrangement

Who cares for Indian cricket even as corruption exists at the very top?

Only pressure from a cricket-crazy Indian public can clean up the administration of the game and what can be politely described as external influences on the outcomes of matches and individual performances. Nothing will otherwise get the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to move, for the organisation is now so powerful at home and in the world, and many of its senior officials are tycoons and powerful politicians in their own right that no government oversight will take place. Yet, the followers of the game seem to be unwilling to make any demand to clean up the sport they follow with so much passion.

Take, for example, the response to the findings of the Supreme Court-appointed Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee confirming that a member of the team administration of Chennai Super Kings, a franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL), had indulged in frequent betting on games in the league and so too had one of the owners of another franchise, Rajasthan Royals. After briefly hitting the headlines the matter has disappeared from public discussion. More worrying is the response to news about the sealed report submitted by the committee to the Supreme Court, which has been kept “secret” because it mentions far more serious acts of illegality that could not be verified and need Court direction for further investigation. Once again there has been public silence. Is it that the cricket-crazy Indian does not care or has become so cynical about the possibility of the game being cleaned up that she is content to follow the spectacle even if the game may in some instances be set up by players and officials at the highest level?

FACE OFF (Photo- Surya)

Ever since allegations of match- and spot-fixing involving test cricket and one-day international players first came to light in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the BCCI has made no more than cursory efforts to clean up the game. At the time, after a Central Bureau of Investigation report, a few players were suspended, a few scapegoats banned and everyone was assured the game was clean. It defied imagination that it could be. The cricket fan herself has been willing to accept these efforts and the media on its part has stuck to sounding the drums when allegations surface and then letting the matter pass. We now know that betting takes place on a large scale and officials and players (how many?) are deeply implicated in spot-betting/fixing. In the 2013 IPL episode, far from seeking to reform and “clean up its act”, the BCCI has only doubled down on its strategy to protect officials. The BCCI now dominates world cricket since no cricket board has shown the courage to stand up to its bullying ways as the lucrative revenues from the Indian market have blinded them to reason and correctness. So much so, the BCCI now uses its power to change the structure of international cricket, force arbitrary changes to tour schedules and impose its own views on use of technology in cricket.

Anyone complacent about the state of affairs in Indian cricket should be made aware of what the US’ historically most popular sport – baseball – went through. Early in the 1910s, some prominent American players in baseball were found guilty of match-fixing in the professional baseball league and many of them were banned for life. It took the sport a while to recover, but it rediscovered its popularity within a few years and retained its eminence as “America’s favourite pastime”. In contrast, a century later, administrators of the game showed little concern about the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in the 1990s and 2000s at the peak of the sport’s commercialisation. They were buoyed by the surge of popularity for power-hitting and displays on the playing field as commercial interests outweighed that of propriety and fairness. Soon, as player after player was found to have used PEDs, the game’s credibility nosedived and the popularity of the sport was hit. The complacency of the baseball administrators had led to a massive blow to the sport, even as other forms of organised sport in the US managed to gain support. Something like this is happening in Indian cricket today except that the popularity of the sport is yet to be affected.

The rush to create the IPL in 2008 on a purely commercial basis pushed cricket from being a sport to an avenue of entertainment and profit-making. With a frenzied cricket-loving public reduced to disempowered spectators, andcorporate owners and the sports administration milking the game’s popularity for commercial profit, little effort was made to institute a culture of probity. No attention was paid to clear conflicts of interest, particularly where board members owned teams, and funds from dubious sources poured in. Within three years, there were allegations about corruption involving board officials, franchisees and players. The IPL management was replaced by a new set of officials, but little was done to address the structural fault lines of the league.

The media’s interest in cashing in on the popularity of the lucrative IPL and the nexus between the corridors of political power and cricket administration has resulted in civil society and the polity showing no enthusiasm to seek broad changes to the BCCI and the IPL. Indian cricket has become a casualty to this all-powerful commercialism. Nothing is likely to change until the cricket fan revolts.