The BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket) loses in court against 2 IPL teams
The BCCI (the cricket board of India) considers itself all powerful, and with its commercial success and huge monetary balances, it also has a lot of powerful political patronage (after all, the all powerful Union Minister Sharad Pawar is in charge of the cricket body). And, goaded by competition from Subash Chandra’s ICL, the BCCI set up its own version of the T20 championship, the IPL. The IPL was stewarded by Lalit Modi, and he set it up as an incredible money making machine, earning huge money for the BCCI. Of course, when somebody makes such a successful machine, they also tend to get corrupted themselves, and so Lalit Modi allegedly has his own stake in the various transactions done as part of the BCCI (such as the various companies used for advertising and media deals), and also in multiple teams that take part in the IPL.
When finally things came to a head, in the debate over setting up a new IPL team, there was a conflict in interest between Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi, and an open confrontation between them took the scalp of Shashi Tharoor; and when a minister goes, there are consequences; one of the most important consequences was that it was also time for Lalit Modi to go. And so, many of his offences were detailed out, and he was railroaded out (even though the Board was equally culpable for the various acts and omissions). As a part of investigations, the Board also wanted to go against teams where Lalit Modi was involved in some ways (lot of speculation that Lalit Modi had interests in the Rajasthan and Chandigarh teams !), and so, it was speculated that the board would take some action against these teams.
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Categories: Accountable, Controversy, Cricket, Finance, Fraud, India, Investigation, Judges, Judiciary Tags: BCCI, Controversy, Court, Cricket, Decision, High Court, Indian Cricket, IPL, Judgment, Kings XI, Preity Zinta, Rajasthan Royals, Shilpa Shetty, Stay, T20 Cricket
Lalit Modi, and how the IPL issue is blowing into a Congress-NCP issue
It seemed like a small issue, and initially, we could not believe it. How can Lalit Modi, who otherwise seemed such a successful organizer (and would have had to overcome so many obstacles including people trying to take his position) find himself in such a position. And the more so with Shashi Tharoor, who had been a diplomat for so long that one would have thought that he could make his way out of any sticky position (as he had done so earlier with his many comments on Twitter).
And yet both of them found themselves in a conflict, and both turned out to be losers. Shashi Tharoor was clearly trying to take some financial advantage by using his good offices to get many of the buyers of the Kochi IPL team together; in itself, this was not something new (one would think that most politicians use all opportunities to make money). What seemed to be clear was that he did not know the ways in which to do this in a way that provides deniability. Further, so far, IPL seemed to be a non-controversial event for the media, and now that they saw a good juicy controversy, they jumped into this issue with full gusto and started digging to get more details.
One of the interesting subplots to emerge from all this has been the issue around Sharad Pawar. Even though he is a Minister in the Congress Government, the Congress has no love lost for him, and would use whatever opportunity they could find to cut him down to size. This latest controversy seems to be giving the Congress a way to target not only Pawar, but the NCP as well. Right now, we are hearing about how there are reports implicating the son-in-law of Sharad Pawar, as well as another minister of the NCP, the Civil Aviation Minister.
Lalit Modi on the other hand is not going down as easily as some would have liked. He is refusing to attend the special session called to throw him out, and even questioning the special session. And given that he would have so many secrets, it is not so easy to consider that he will go away easily; even more so since you consider that such a move out will leave him with no further authority.
Categories: Corruption, Cricket, India, Politics Tags: Controversy, Corruption, Cricket, IPL, Kochi, Lalit Modi, Money, Shashi Tharoor, Team
The whole drama over the IPL and Pakistani players
Why is that the IPL always have some kind of drama even before it starts ? Last year it was all about the Government not willing to provide the required level of security, and after some words between Lalit Modi (who eventually works for BCCI, which was headed by Sharad Pawar), the whole tournament was moved to South Africa. The Government was never happy with this approach, and considered the movement of the tournament to South Africa as a vote of no-confidence. Of course, it is a different matter that the Government finally got back on Lalit Modi by getting him removed from any official position in the Rajasthan state cricket board in the last election to that board.
This year, there is another major drama that has already happened. The Government is unable to take a strong position on Pakistan inspite of all the provocations, and open support to terrorism inside India. The Government does not even seem to be retaliating in the same coin, and refuses to take any action to even convince the public that it is serious on doing something. However, there is another initiative that is happening in terms of trying to increase people-to-people contact so that the peace process could start at the grassroots level (whether that works is a different matter).
