As the seventh edition of the Indian Premier League, cricket’s revolutionary star-studded 20 overs tourney begins today, the glitzy league opens with controversy throwing its long shadow over it
As the seventh edition of the Indian Premier League, cricket’s revolutionary star-studded 20 overs tourney begins today, the glitzy league opens with controversy throwing its long shadow over it. One gets the feeling that the big guns of the cricket board want to go on with the IPL, by simply sweeping things under the carpet. While nobody says it openly, the IPL is going on based on the premise that once the league begins, the excitement will hold the fans in thrall and let us not think about all the allegations about match fixing.
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Even M S Dhoni, usually Mr Candid himself, has not spoken out about the recent fixing allegations, though he was part of allegations and counter allegations flying around. Reports state that Dhoni has joked, when asked about how one could keep the IPL clean, that we should use a laundry service.
There is still an air of flippancy and a don’t-tackle-it attitude by the cricket bosses. We are moving from one IPL to the next without even ensuring that the problems of the past have been resolved. While it may be impossible, as experts claim, to stop betting altogether, there has to be a concerted effort to clean up the house.
Once the cricket bosses realised that IPL parties (post-match partying) was giving the league a bad name, so to speak, they moved quickly on that putting an end to the post-match merriment which overshadowed field action. The cricket honchos had little option but to act.
Now, riddled by allegations of fixing, the league goes on despite all the corruption charges that have tainted the game. The fans deserve answers, instead of just cosmetic inquiries masquerading as clean ups and jokes. Because this is a club tourney and not a national or international one, it does not give cricketers and the cricket body licence to carry on endlessly with inquiries in the hope that everybody will forget or just get tired of asking. The game must go on, as the phrase goes, yet not without checks and balances. Here, there are too many slips to ignore.
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