IPL Betting - Sports or Business?

Cricket is the game that is been celebrated and followed greatly in India with a lot of passion and enthusiasm. The sport has always been the favorite both to watch and play. Cricket has a great fan following around the world compared to all other sports and thus continues to dominate the sports world. Cricket is called the gentleman’s game which is deeply celebrated with abundant passion and love for the game by the Indians particularly. No matter the age, in this country, both young children and the old are so fond of this particular game. It is also so surprising that even the grandparents and parents go crazy by the game. You could very well see every streets and empty grounds in India occupied with people of all age passionately playing cricket even during the scorching summer heat. The players are celebrated and treated godly in this land and the cricketers are seen as the one by all when the game is on. This has given the players popularity and fame but at the same time open to criticism and comments. Unlike other sport, cricket has always gained attention and is thus open to continuous change and welcome to new game formats. The one that has gained popularity recently is the 20-20 format which gave way to the concept of Indian Premier League.

The IPL was first introduced in 2008 with warm welcome and enthusiasm among the cricket fraternity. The young generation of India was looking forward to more excitement from the new league. Ever since its first edition the IPL has believed that roping in actors and celebrities from the film world would gain the attention of a larger audience which would help in generating more revenue. This trick of involving actors and other big business magnets made the IPL and particularly the game commercialized with a big dose of entertainment than the spirits of the game and sportsmanship. I don’t have to say and there is no need to introduce the rules of this great league but I would like to mention the formation of teams and its ownership. There are totally nine teams in the IPL each of which is either owned by a Bollywood celebrity or bureaucrats. The players of the teams are formed based on an auction prior to the beginning of the league. So the very formation and ownership of the teams brings in the practices of business. The players and the teams are valued based on the highest bid and their performance in the league every year. So you happen to see no big shuffle in the teams as the owners try to retain their old players. Here let me mention the owners of the nine teams, Chennai super kings owned by Gurnath Meyiapaan who is the grandson of Meyiappan and is the owner of AVM a big production house in south. Rajasthan Royals owned by Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, Mumbai Indians by Reliance owner Mukesh Ambani and his wife, Kolkata Knight riders by Badshah of bollywood Sharukh khan, Delhi Daredevils by GMR group, Bangalore Royal Challengers by Kingfisher owner Vijay Mallya, Kings XI Punjab by Bollywood actress Preity Zinta, Sunrisers Hyderabad by Kalanidhi Maran and Pune warriors by Sahara India Pariwar.

The concept of IPL is interesting as it gives the viewers a T-20 game format which makes the audience adrenaline rush as the matches are mostly edge of the seat thriller where anything can happen in the last minute which can turn the whole fate of the game. Apart from this the IPL encourages the concept of integrating foreign players. This is one of the facts that I personally like most, where the mixing of foreign players is a sign of good sportsmanship that allow players to share their ideas and strategy with their fellow players. When I first heard about the IPL I was really thrilled and curious for the tournament to begin because I am generally not that cricket enthuse. But I really love the T-20 format as it makes us glued to the game rather than the usual ODI and test cricket. Ever since the IPL begun I eagerly await the summer holidays during which the IPL season take off. I have been regularly watching the IPL in the last five years with the same excitement and this year too its no exception. But this time towards the end when the dark side of the sport revealed and the story of spot fixing made flash on the news channels I seriously started thinking what this whole thing of IPL is all about. For a die hard cricket fan the drama of spot fixing surrounding the IPL in this season may not be a matter of concern or excuse to wean away from watching the great league. As an amateur viewer of the game, I really started to ponder over the issue and what the league gives its loyal consumers at the end.

As usual, this year too the IPL season 6 started with the same celebrations and fanfare but this year apart from the game it gave us the story of betting and spot fixing. IPL is born in the land where cricket is treated as the god of sports and where cricketers are seen as super heroes sent to the ground to fight the battle. So in such a land you can imagine how crazy and loving the people will be when a great cricket tournament like IPL takes place.  Does the IPL brand live up to the expectations of these people? Does it continue to provide good sport? The question needs to be answered. The cricket world in India is managed by a separate official body called BCCI. This year when the match fixing and betting threw light on the other side of the sport world it makes clear that the official body has not managed the sport effectively making the people of this country a victim to false game and match fixing. However the BCCI cannot take the whole blame as the IPL involves other intermediaries and franchises who are big boss in the corporate world who have the right to rule the league as they happen to be the sponsors and owners of the teams. But now that the dirty picture got revealed the BCCI has to take moral responsibilities to avoid such scams further in the coming years in order to make the IPL survive.

The picture of spot fixing got reveled days before the quarterfinals and when fans of the four teams that qualified for quarterfinals were curiously waiting for the climax of the tournament. It started with Sreesanth a player of Rajasthan Royals involved in fixing. Subsequently the police probed the issue and provided more evidence of Sreesanth involved in spot fixing and finally confirmed that his firm owned betting houses. Within a day other two players of the same team were accused and arrested on match fixing. The Rajasthan Royals was then on a fix and the police started to investigate whether other teams were linked to spot fixing. And within days other big heads of the IPL betting scam came into the spotlight. It was then Gurunath Meiyappan the team principal of CSK and son in law of the president of BCCI Mr. Srinivasan. Further investigation by the Mumbai and Delhi police officials found other big names who was allegedly involved in the betting scam. Bollywood actor Vinod singh was one of the main accused who was in frequent touch with Ramesh Vyas a bookie. Soon it came to know that Meiyappan, Vinod singh and few other suspects placed heavy bets not only in the T-20 matches in the IPL but also on Indian Cricket League (ICL) and Bangladesh Premier League (BPL). Further investigation by the police officials on the case revealed that there were more bookies involved in the betting scandal and some of them had been earlier arrested on charges of betting. The investigation and court case is still on and many more insights and evidences are yet to pop out once the case is taken to the jurisdiction. So far the Delhi police say the betting operation exactly follows a well planned hierarchy. The big bosses of the game provide protection since the entire betting operation is illegal. The CEOs seem to initiate the bets and manage a network of sub bookies. These sub bookies fix matches through mediators.  The whole betting scandal involved big cats like Meiyappan and Vinod singh, Chief bookies from the Indian metros, sub bookies and also some international heads.

The Indian Premier League is now rotten to the core but this rot did not set in yesterday. In the previous years also we saw the former chairman of the IPL, Lalit Modi accused of corruption and fixing, its now just the turn of his successor. Whoever thought these two gentlemen were fit to head IPL ought to be hauled up for all its present ills. Let us at least hope for a new successor who is really capable of handling the league for what it actually meant to serve the nation. The Indian Cricket is now in ferment and its credibility is lost in a crisis caused by the dirty game played by the body that controls it. The great golden IPL trophy seems to lose all its prestige and shine now because of the greedy nature of its administrators. The IPL has become a brand of its own in this country that glorifies the sport. A well established brand is bound to generate crores of money and IPL is no exception to this since its inception. The payment made to players for a twenty 20 match seem to be Rs. 2 Lakh. A rough expenditure for cricketing activities in India seem to be around Rs. 340 Crore and for associations Rs. 275 Crore out of which the share to players come around Rs. 47.49 Crore and coaching around 6.58 Crore. The gross income from the IPL turns out to be Rs. 265.14 Crore. So in a place where money seems to play a vital role few stringent regulations are mandatory for a clean sport. On this regard there were some strong recommendations and few of them are the Anti Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) of the BCCI has said that from the next IPL edition every franchise will have to appoint an ACSU officer who would monitor access to the players. The process of educating the players on the perils of spot and match fixing have to be further strengthened. The ministry of law and sports together has said a bill to effectively tackle spot fixing and match fixing would hopefully be introduced in the next parliament session. There is a strong support for making the betting process legal which would help in creating a legal environment and avoid such illegal dirty fixing process in the future. It is said that Cricket is a game that is played by eleven idiots and watched by eleven thousand fools, this year the IPL and the ongoing betting scandal makes it true. However, just because some of the players were involved in spot fixing it doesn’t mean that the entire IPL is wrong, there are still legends playing the game passionately being true to their inner self. A country where millions of fans watch the game seriously and prayers are on air for their respective teams to win, it is the duty of the IPL to give a fair game to its audience. But this time the matches were predictable and it was obvious that CSK will lose in the final which by no means provide a good sport and justice to their fans and people watching the tournament. The controversies surrounding the IPL seem to have not affected the audiences viewing the sport which is a good sign but its now in the hands of the BCCI and IPL administrators to make the league survive in the future. However, the IPL betting and spot fixing scandal has put India’s cricket establishment in the dock and left people wondering whether the sport will ever regain its lost image as a gentleman’s game.