A Supreme Court-appointed panel on Monday found Gurunath Meiyappan, son-in-law of N Srinivasan, the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, guilty of betting and match-fixing during the 2013 edition of the Indian Premier League.
"Roots of corruption and malpractices have crept in deep into the game of cricket, more particularly the IPL, and are seeping into the game at an alarming rate," the panel said in its 170-page report.
Meiyappan was the team principal of Chennai Super Kings, an IPL franchise owned by his father-in-law's India Cements company.
This is not the first time the Indian twenty-twenty tournament has been mired in controversy. Last year, charges of spot-fixing and match-fixing were laid against five Indian Premier League players: Sreesanth (who has represented India in 27 Tests), Ankeet Chavan, Ajit Chandila, Amit Singh and Siddharth Trivedi, all of whom face trials and have been banned by the BCCI.
Earlier, in 2010, the BCCI suspended IPL chairman, Lalit Modi, for financial irregularities and misbehaviour.
Paradoxically, even as Indians are angered by corruption in other spheres of life, the tainted sport of cricket continues to enjoy immense popularity among viewers and sponsors.
A record 100 million people watched the IPL on television last year. Multi Screen Media, the official IPL broadcaster, has raised ad rates by 20 per cent from last year, and still has all its previous sponsors and advertisers on board. This is no mean achievement, considering this is election year and much of media investment goes towards news channels.
Why aren't Indians bothered about scandals in the sport they claim to love so much? The problem, said cricket writer Pradeep Magazine, may be that Indians have come to see cricket as just another form of entertainment. "They like the glamour that surrounds the IPL, in the form of film stars and celebrities," he said. "When you go see a match, you don't notice the controversy."
Cricket, he said, is just like that other TV spectacle involving muscular people tossing one other around in an obviously choreographed manner. "It's like watching wrestling on TV, with both participants going through fixed routines," Magazine said. "But it's still entertaining, there is still a display of skill."
Cricket writer Ayaz Memon, who writes a column for 'The Hindustan Times", suggests that Indians don't care as much about corruption in cricket as they do about political and bureaucratic scandals because sport is an indulgence while good administration is necessity.
"It was basic needs such as water and electricity that brought the AAP [Aam Aadmi Party] to power in Delhi," he said. "But buying a ticket to watch a match or a movie is not the same thing."
Despite this, he warned that the corruption scandals rocking the IPL are robbing it of its credibility. "It's important that the tournament is not reduced to a WWF-like show," Memon said. World Wrestling Entertainment, a US company that produces scripted wrestling tournaments, was formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation, or WWF.
However, Rahul Mehra, long-time cricket enthusiast and founder member of the Aam Aadmi Party, did not agree that corruption in cricket did not matter to the public. "What about the cricketers, and the many people who make the industry work?" he asked.
Mehra said there was a conspiracy of silence about the corruption in the game, as top politicians made sure they shunted out both cricketers and the common cricket-loving citizen from the decision-making processes.
"They say that the cricketing boards are democratically elected bodies. So how then do these processes still lead to N Srinivasan becoming the BCCI chief while owning an IPL franchise?" he asked. "What about conflict of interest? How does the process not account for something so basic?"
The only way to clean up the sport, Mehra said, is by giving power to the player and to the viewer, by setting up an independent regulatory body -- a sort of Lokpal for cricket -- or by having the sports ministry lay out a set of best practices. If they are not followed, the board should not be allowed to field a team representing India, Mehra said.
"We need vyavastha parivarthan [change in practice] in cricket as well," he said.
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"Roots of corruption and malpractices have crept in deep into the game of cricket, more particularly the IPL, and are seeping into the game at an alarming rate," the panel said in its 170-page report.
Meiyappan was the team principal of Chennai Super Kings, an IPL franchise owned by his father-in-law's India Cements company.
This is not the first time the Indian twenty-twenty tournament has been mired in controversy. Last year, charges of spot-fixing and match-fixing were laid against five Indian Premier League players: Sreesanth (who has represented India in 27 Tests), Ankeet Chavan, Ajit Chandila, Amit Singh and Siddharth Trivedi, all of whom face trials and have been banned by the BCCI.
Earlier, in 2010, the BCCI suspended IPL chairman, Lalit Modi, for financial irregularities and misbehaviour.
Paradoxically, even as Indians are angered by corruption in other spheres of life, the tainted sport of cricket continues to enjoy immense popularity among viewers and sponsors.
A record 100 million people watched the IPL on television last year. Multi Screen Media, the official IPL broadcaster, has raised ad rates by 20 per cent from last year, and still has all its previous sponsors and advertisers on board. This is no mean achievement, considering this is election year and much of media investment goes towards news channels.
Why aren't Indians bothered about scandals in the sport they claim to love so much? The problem, said cricket writer Pradeep Magazine, may be that Indians have come to see cricket as just another form of entertainment. "They like the glamour that surrounds the IPL, in the form of film stars and celebrities," he said. "When you go see a match, you don't notice the controversy."
Cricket, he said, is just like that other TV spectacle involving muscular people tossing one other around in an obviously choreographed manner. "It's like watching wrestling on TV, with both participants going through fixed routines," Magazine said. "But it's still entertaining, there is still a display of skill."
Cricket writer Ayaz Memon, who writes a column for 'The Hindustan Times", suggests that Indians don't care as much about corruption in cricket as they do about political and bureaucratic scandals because sport is an indulgence while good administration is necessity.
"It was basic needs such as water and electricity that brought the AAP [Aam Aadmi Party] to power in Delhi," he said. "But buying a ticket to watch a match or a movie is not the same thing."
Despite this, he warned that the corruption scandals rocking the IPL are robbing it of its credibility. "It's important that the tournament is not reduced to a WWF-like show," Memon said. World Wrestling Entertainment, a US company that produces scripted wrestling tournaments, was formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation, or WWF.
However, Rahul Mehra, long-time cricket enthusiast and founder member of the Aam Aadmi Party, did not agree that corruption in cricket did not matter to the public. "What about the cricketers, and the many people who make the industry work?" he asked.
Mehra said there was a conspiracy of silence about the corruption in the game, as top politicians made sure they shunted out both cricketers and the common cricket-loving citizen from the decision-making processes.
"They say that the cricketing boards are democratically elected bodies. So how then do these processes still lead to N Srinivasan becoming the BCCI chief while owning an IPL franchise?" he asked. "What about conflict of interest? How does the process not account for something so basic?"
The only way to clean up the sport, Mehra said, is by giving power to the player and to the viewer, by setting up an independent regulatory body -- a sort of Lokpal for cricket -- or by having the sports ministry lay out a set of best practices. If they are not followed, the board should not be allowed to field a team representing India, Mehra said.
"We need vyavastha parivarthan [change in practice] in cricket as well," he said.
