IPL Spot Fixing Scam Gets Bigger And BCCI Does Nothing!

Even as the IPL Spot Fixing Scam got bigger in terms of reach, penetration and implications the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) held an emergency meeting in Chennai today and did absolutely nothing. Perhaps it had taken heart from the widely expressed opinion by cricket experts that bans hardly work as deterrent for the cricketers and therefore desisted from taking any tough action against the three cheats charged by the police with criminal offenses unlike last timewhen a sting operation exposed five players. The Board feigned total ignorance about the police investigations and referred to the three cheats as ‘alleged’ fixers saying that they would take action if the three criminals are proved guilty. Coincidentally, the respective lawyers of the trio vouched for their innocence. The BCCI seemed to have taken full solace in their own inquiry committee appointed for the purpose and reasserted that they would do nothing till its report is received.

In fact, the BCCI President N Srinivasan has been maintaining since the scam surfaced that the BCCI ‘is not a government’ or ‘is not an investigating agency’ or ‘is not a political authority’. And today in Chennai he reiterated the same expressing the Board’s inability to take action against the criminals or the bookies. But why can’t it at least file criminal complaints against the three or more potential fixers? And why can’t it realize what it is fully capable of doing? Like making IPL a genuine cricket tournament; stopping selling and buying of cricketers; maintaining transparency of accounts; getting rid of all glamor quotients like the cheerleaders, the strategic time-out that proved to be a boon for bookies to abet betting, loud orchestration of music and other commercial gimmicks; reducing the number of matches and introducing strict disciplinary rules and accountability for the franchises and the players. The BCCI could do it, but won’t; because it basically wants to rake in the dirty money by attracting hordes of revelers and gullible spectators to throng the stadiums or the television sets at the cost of cricket.

Therefore, the BCCI takes resort to the most ridiculous contention that despite the scam IPL matches are still getting full houses, and that the President of BCCI is indeed grateful for the continuing public support. Well, N Srinivasan should concentrate on counting how many in the crowds turn out to be fans of genuine cricket and how many picnickers. Now, he talks of ‘educating’ the players and constituting anti-corruption committees for each of the franchises. Well, why did he not think of educating in 2008 and what exactly the anti-corruption committee of the BCCI doing? The plain truth is that no moneyed interests vested in T20 Cricket could possibly risk the ‘health and wealth’ of the flourishing cricket bonanza called IPL.

Concerned cricket fans are asking for naming all match fixers as criminals and severe punishment for the guilty.  However, the money-greed-lust madness called IPL would be very difficult to control effectively thanks to the huge vested interests. Particularly in a country like India where a nationwide anti-corruption movement miserably fails even to move the corrupt an inch and where police officers investigating corruption scams get caught receiving bribes! We are left with the only one option. BAN IPL NOW! SAVE CRICKET TOMORROW!