Let's play it straight
Unfortunately, the IPL, for all its phenomenal success in becoming a global brand in barely three years, has lacked a certain transparency in its functioning
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Unfortunately, the IPL, for all its phenomenal success in becoming a global brand in barely three years, has lacked a certain transparency in its functioning. Do we, for example, have full disclosures of all the stakeholders of the IPL teams, including ‘related parties’ and ‘associate businesses’? asks Rajdeep Sardesai in the Hindustan Times.
These are questions that haven’t been fully answered because the IPL has been run like a tightly-knit Boys Club, a clique of the rich and famous who appear to have mutually decided the rules of engagement with Modi and Mammon as the presiding deities. IPL Kochi, let’s be honest, tried to gatecrash into the party. The owners weren’t business barons (or at least none we’d heard of), nor were they film stars. The only recognisable ‘face’ they possessed was a high-profile minister with an unquestioned passion for cricket.
The editorial in the Hindu is also about the controversy engulfing the IPL.
The Indian Premier League is an ingeniously conceived and spectacularly executed show. It features genuine sporting skills along with elements of the burlesque. Now into its third edition, it has acquired not just a mass following but also new cohorts of fans among those who did not know they would love cricket lite. But success has brought a stiff price: serious questions about the league's integrity and internal governance.
Shekhar Gupta adopts an "I told you so" tone in his column in the Indian Express reiterating the concerns he had raised when the IPL was shifted to 2009. He is thankful to the two power brokers - Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi - who have turned on each other to bring the issues surrounding the IPL to the fore.
Tharoor can now deny till he goes red in the face the insinuation from the other end that he allegedly advised them that the only way he could help block the visa was if someone filed a police complaint against her. But if he, instead, sent Modi a curt note as a minister as “propah” as his accent should have done, saying that such requests are not entertained by the minister’s office and can you please go to hell, it has not been shared with us.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo