Watch Hasan Minhaj’s take on corruption in cricket and the BCCI (and an interview with Lalit Modi)
‘We’re so concerned with owning the sport, the it isn’t about playing cricket anymore. It’s about colonising it for ourselves.’
With the Cricket World Cup 2019 only a few days away, the excitement is mounting. While we cheer for the teams and the players, comedian Hasan Minhaj does not want us to forget the corruption that has seeped into the sport governing bodies, particularly in India.
On his show Patriot Act, Minhaj highlighted the ways in which corruption in the Board of Control for Cricket in India has stifled grows. As he rightly points out, the emergence of the Indian Premiere League and the rise of its first chairman Lalit Modi played a major role in the process of bringing BCCI to its current state.
In fact, Modi himself took the blame for “creating the war chest” for the BCCI, in an interview with Minhaj in London, where he is currently living in exile. He had left India in 2010 after being charged with money laundering and rigging bids for the IPL.
During the interview, a very emphatic Modi also made it clear that he did not take the blame for anything else and the law would find no evidence of wrongdoing by him.