A black day for IPL and cricket

It seems that IPL, over the years, can be characterised by two words – Cricket and Controversies and, both ironically, start with a ‘C’.

Just when we thought that IPL 6 will be all about cricket, controversies had to raise its ugly head again. And this time, the controversy in question is so big that it will not just affect the IPL, but it will have a bearing on the game at large as well. Spot Fixing has been making headlines for some time now; it all began with Pakistan cricketer Danish Kaneria reported to have spot fixed few matches during his English county stint. We all know what happened when three leading Pakistan cricketers were arrested on charges of spot fixing in an International Test match against England. Last year in IPL, a news channel conducted a sting operation wherein around 5 domestic players were asked by undercover reporters to spot fix few matches. After, conducting an initial inquiry, BCCI banned 2 of the 5 cricketers in question. The point to note here is that these cricketers never spot fixed any match, they just gave a verbal confirmation to the reporter that they would go ahead with the required spot fixing, yet the BCCI went ahead and banned the players.

Now this year, the story that has surfaced is much more damning, and may possibly be the biggest expose since the match fixing scandal that rocked the cricketing world in 1999. Here’s a low-down of what happened today since morning:

• Early today morning, news report suggested that three Indian cricketers, who play for the IPL franchise Rajasthan Royals namely S. Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan & Ajit Chandila have been arrested by the Mumbai Police for allegedly spot fixing in a few IPL games
• The trio was flown to Delhi later in the day as reports surfaced that this investigation was an ongoing operation of the Delhi police and that they have been following bookies for the last six months to collect substantial evidence
• BCCI President N. Srinivasan, through a video conference from Kodaikanal, addressed the media and briefed them about the situation. He said that BCCI were shocked to hear about the spot fixing scandal and were particularly disappointed since a cricketer who has played Tests for India was one of the culprits
• Delhi police addressed a press conference at around 3 pm today, where the Delhi police commissioner shared details about the operation and also shared the transcripts between cricketers and the bookies along with the video evidence of the matches in question. Sharing of such evidence to the press was very unique as such sharing to the media normally does not happen in India.

Now, few points to ponder from the day’s developments so far is that Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila would surely have been lured with the kind of money that they were promised to be paid by the bookies, but why would a cricketer like Sreesanth who has played for India, earns a good amount of money from his IPL contract, do such an act. It is just bizarre to see a cricketer who earns so much, have the greed for more. Another point to ponder is the fact that the bookies arrested were having regular conversations with someone in Dubai and Pakistan. This is a crucial information for the police that may lead to an expose of the bigger nexus in the money trial used for such fixing activities.

Such a big expose by the police only points to one fact that this is just a tip of the iceberg and unless BCCI and the ICC take stringent measures to curb out fixing of any manner (be it match fixing or spot fixing), the game of cricket will keep getting tarnished and image of the game will go down further.