A damning indictment has been delivered of the Indian Premier League, which has been reeking of the corrupt practices of officials and betting and fixing misdemeanours of players for years. The Supreme Court-appointed Justice Lodha Committee, comprising three retired judges of the apex court, delivered decisive blows against two team owners and two franchises.
Gurunath Meiyappan, son-in-law of ICC chairman N. Srinivasan, and Raj Kundra, co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals, have been banned from involvement with BCCI in any cricket activities for life. More significantly, the committee suspended two IPL franchises — Chennai Super Kings, owned by India Cements, and Rajasthan Royals — for two years from the league. A fawning BCCI and its IPL governing council and star-struck franchises, have been pronounced guilty of not acting to safeguard the purity of the game, all of them causing immeasurable harm to cricket. Regarding the two teams’ cricketers, who may not have acted in cahoots with the owners, the committee held they are free to play for other franchises in the next two years.
It took the wisdom of the judges to point out the corrections the BCCI would not do under Mr Srinivasan’s tutelage. Having been in self-denial for two years even as it defended Mr Srinivasan’s personal position, the BCCI was awakened cruelly to its duties and responsibilities towards a game which for a couple of centuries has prided itself on being a metaphor for fair play and sporting spirit. Indeed, things had been brought to such a pass by the self-indulgence of the top administrator of cricket. At least now he should accept moral responsibility and step down as ICC chairman as not only his kin, but also what was once a team owned by the company in which he and his family hold majority shares have been banned from the game.
Had the BCCI weeded out such elements as Meiyappan and Kundra, instead of appointing a smokescreen committee, the league and its honest players would not have faced such opprobrium. The current BCCI administration would be doing cricket in India a noble service if it views this judgment as an opportunity to cleanse the game rather than take off on another legal appeals route. Lawyers do not take a moral position with their expensive arguments, they clutch at expediency in searching for legal loopholes. It is highly doubtful that cricket can live up to a higher, and nobler, concept when Mr Srinivasan — the very embodiment of the conflicts of interest that brought the IPL to its knees — sticks to his ICC post like a limpet to a rock. But the game should go on, so too the IPL with alternative arrangements for other franchises to fill the slots. The “paramountcy of purity of cricket” must be upheld, towards which this verdict is only the first step.
