Vin­ode Mam­chan

The In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL), which was en­joy­ing its most suc­cess­ful sea­son to date, has been rocked by al­le­ga­tions of match-fix­ing by three Ra­jasthan Roy­als play­ers.Spot-fix­ing, match-fix­ing and oth­er forms of cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing the IPL do not sur­prise me be­cause when mil­lion­aires throw mon­ey be­hind a crick­et team, they want un­lim­it­ed con­trol and think they and their fam­i­ly and friends can re­side in the dugouts and the dress­ing rooms, like play­ers.

One can­not take a break from keep­ing an eye out for cor­rupt in­di­vid­u­als around the crick­et and once this is done, the book­ies are just wait­ing to get it. The IPL, with a cock­tail of par­ty at­mos­phere, en­ter­tain­ment, crick­et and celebri­ty be­comes at­trac­tive to the cor­rupt ones. Amid all that, we find that some of the bad old faces who were in­volved in match-fix­ing a decade ago, re-ap­pear­ing at grounds and ho­tels and want­i­ng to get in­volved.

With this in mind, I am quick to be­lieve that the IPL brings with it the biggest threat in terms of cor­rup­tion in the game since the days of rich crick­et in Shar­jah. It is sim­ple to un­der­stand why peo­ple would go af­ter IPL match­es. It is very pop­u­lar and mil­lions of eye­balls are fixed on it. This means that with more peo­ple in­volved, in­ter­est is keen and there are more tak­ers when bets are of­fered. It makes the IPL fer­tile grounds for match-fix­ers.An­oth­er big fac­tor is the re­laxed at­ti­tude to se­cu­ri­ty. The Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI) goes out of its way to pro­vide phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty for the play­ers from fans and even po­ten­tial ter­ror­ists. How­ev­er, its at­ti­tude has been a lot more re­laxed in pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty for the sport of crick­et.

Match-fix­ing has eat­en away at the bow­els of the sport of crick­et since it reared its ug­ly head about a decade ago. The BC­CI has to pro­tect the game from even the play­ers when they are in­duced in­to dis­hon­esty by book­ies who are will­ing to pay them in one go even more mon­ey than they can get for an en­tire se­ries.Dur­ing the in­au­gur­al IPL, ICC An­ti-Cor­rup­tion and Se­cu­ri­ty Unit of­fi­cers were present in In­dia but on­ly in an ad­vi­so­ry role. Lalit Mo­di, the then IPL chair­man, de­cid­ed to hire a pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firm from South Africa to main­ly look af­ter the se­cu­ri­ty of the play­ers.

A set of 10 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials with vary­ing mil­i­tary and po­lice back­grounds were trained by the AC­SU of­fi­cers. How­ev­er, it was nev­er go­ing to be a smooth af­fair with the mil­lion­aire own­ers unim­pressed by the med­dling of the AC­SU of­fi­cers, who they felt were be­ing too in­tru­sive. On one oc­ca­sion, Kolkata Knight Rid­ers' own­er Shah Rukh Khan was asked, at the be­hest of the AC­SU, to leave the dugout dur­ing one of the match­es be­cause he was not prop­er­ly ac­cred­it­ed.This did not go down too well and the BC­CI has gen­er­al­ly bowed to the re­quest of their big spend­ing own­ers. I am not say­ing that the own­ers are cor­rupt but when the rules of se­cu­ri­ty are slack­ened it makes room for oth­ers with bad in­ten­tions to be­come close to the play­ers and get them hooked on their scheme.

In­ci­dents like match-fix­ing have pro­found ef­fects on the fans, who die for this game. It will lead them to ques­tion more and more. A mis­take on the field will no longer be just that, an in­te­gral part of sport, but will be scru­ti­nised for a dark mo­tive. An un­ortho­dox shot or a gam­ble with the ball will not pro­duce a thrill and a sigh, but anger. And it won't just be fans but cap­tains and team­mates who will feel that way.The fan has a right to be an­gry and let down. I think that the In­di­an fans who are very out­spo­ken have to keep at it, keep show­ing their dis­plea­sure, of course in an or­gan­ised way, in or­der to show the BC­CI that as ma­jor stake­hold­ers of the game, they are un­hap­py.

If they move on too fast from this sit­u­a­tion, things would all be for­got­ten and se­cu­ri­ty will again be tak­en for grant­ed and the cy­cle will con­tin­ue. If over a decade match-fix­ing con­tin­ues it is ob­vi­ous that it is some­thing we have to live with like the plague. We need to be vig­i­lant at all times and work aware­ness of the sit­u­a­tion in­to our dai­ly crick­et lives in or­der to stop this rot.