Another Blow for Cricket?

Lalit Modi's gone... The future of the Indian Premier League is clouded by the shadows of match-fixing... Teams may change hands if allegations of shady deals and kickbacks are proved. The journos are having fun because what could be better than sleaze and money put together with cricket - the only thing that would make this an even headier cocktail would be if some sex was involved. The last few weeks... beginning from Modi's now seen as stupid attack on Shashi Tharoor, has brought to my mind the whole question of sports and why it exists.

To me sports was meant to be a leisure activity - if you watched it, you did it because it entertained you, it gave you a healthy chance to let off steam, it gave you a strange sense of brotherhood with the members of the team you supported and it gave you the opportunity to spend quality time with friends and family. If you played it, it was because you loved it so much that you just had to be directly involved, it was the easiest way to stay fit and healthy, it gave you a taste of fame that you so craved and it was an enjoyable means of earning a livelihood.

I think it's safe to say we have come a long way from this now archaic and perhaps redundant idea of sports. Today, sport is synonymous with money, glamour, fame and women (or perhaps men!)... At least as far as sports such as cricket and football go. Yes, we still support our favourite teams to death; we even feel that same sense of camaraderie with the boys in red, blue, yellow or whatever colour it may be. We even fight with our friends/families/colleagues/husbands/wives etc over sporting teams. But in this evolution of sports into the money making monster it is today, the old love and passion for the sport and just the sport has disappeared beneath the murky river of money that now flows through it.

These thoughts are of course clearly inspired by the ongoing controversies in the IPL. Modi was involved in match-fixing... Senior BCCI officials were in the know... Team owners made shady deals with Modi to buy their franchises... Politicians were also involved... Allegation after allegation after allegation. The skeletons tumbling out of various closets threaten to engulf the existence of the one thing that lies at the heart of the situation... cricket.

I was young when the match-fixing scandal hit cricket. I don' remember much apart from having vague memories of names like Mohammad Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja and Hansie Cronje being thrown around amidst hushed whispers and then loud proclamations of match-fixing. Growing up, I have read about these in more detail now. The conclusion reached seems to be that this ugliness existed, was swept away in the quickest manner possible and that cricket had been dealt its first major blow.

Since then the ICC has tried to run a tight ship... occasionally match-fixing allegations crop up (almost inevitably involving the Pakistan cricket team) but nothing as major as what happened some years ago. That is until the third edition of the IPL.

I won't waste time in going over the facts that have been unearthed in the last few weeks (if in fact any of them are actual facts and not just a bunch of spurious allegations with no basis or the products of the over-active minds of scandal-hungry journalists.) In the muddy river of political ties, kickbacks, illegal money laundering, Modi's shady dealings, Tharoor's sometimes and sometimes-not girlfriend, Sharad Pawar's involvement or lack of involvement... once again, the sport of cricket is being made the victim.

Yes it's the IPL... Yes, the IPL is more about the entertainment than the sport. But forgive me for asking... wasn't sport once about entertaining? The IPL took Twenty20 cricket to new levels... Twenty20 in itself was never meant to be taken seriously. A game that lasts all of three hours, is clearly biased towards batsmen and requires the one basic skill of being able to slog the ball over the boundary with no major consideration for strategy or technique... how can anyone take it seriously?

For all of Lalit Modi's faults you have to admire the shrewd businessman in him. He took a format invented in England and turned it on its head into a smart business proposition involving incredible amounts of money, infused with a healthy dose of glamour in the form of Bollywood stars and pumped full of the kind of entertainment that drew previously non-cricket watching audiences into its folds.

So yes, the IPL is entertainment and not really cricket but cricket is still the basis for its existence. And in this murky time of accusations and counter-accusations, cricket has been buried deep beneath the muck that is oozing out from all corners. If Mr Shashi Tharoor put up Sunanda Pushkar as a front for illegal business interests, he murdered cricket. If Mr Lalit Modi has earned money illegally with every deal he made in the IPL, he has killed whatever bit of the sport existed in this tournament. If senior BCCI officials have colluded with Modi and political leaders to make backdoor deals, they have put into doubt the running of Indian cricket itself.

Yes it's only the IPL... and yes we don't take it very seriously. But somewhere I get the feeling that cricket's second deadly blow has just been dealt at the hands of people for whom sports simply equals money.