The IPL monster needs to be tamed

Nasser Hussain writes in the Daily Mail that the main lesson learnt from the IPL fiasco is that no tournament should attempt to become bigger than the game itself.

Let us hope a full inquiry into the allegations surrounding Modi acts as a cleansing exercise not just for the IPL but for the dangers of corruption in Twenty20 cricket throughout the world. Cricket cannot allow itself to be tainted in this way.

The IPL is facing pressure to come clean from several quarters, and the latest group to join the bandwagon is the advertisers who pump in a major portion of the revenue. The Indian Express has the details.

Wall Street Journal's Sadanand Dhume writes that the IPL mess typifies everything that is right and wrong about India.

In a country with a weak legal system, venal political class and hidebound bureaucracy, some of this corner-cutting is expected. India ranks 133rd out of 183 countries in the ease of doing business according to the World Bank's and International Finance Corporation's 2010 Doing Business Report. But the danger, for Indian cricket in particular and for India more broadly, is that such scandals erode faith in market-opening reforms by creating the impression that they benefit only a few. The government appears serious about cleaning up the IPL, but in the long term, the real challenge it faces is to put in place systems that encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, but not at the cost of transparency and the law. India shouldn't have to choose between Mr. Modi the visionary and Mr. Modi the crony capitalist.

In the Wisden Cricketer, Lawrence Booth says that it wouldn't hurt if the tournament downsized a little, reducing it to a month and the ICC ensuring that no international cricket is scheduled at that time.

The commentators, too, can do their part. The degree of brown-nosing, the shamelessness of product placement and the contrived excitement have all been distasteful and demeaning. Jeremy Coney retained his poet’s quirkiness; Mike Haysman never lost sight of the need for serious analysis; Harsha Bhogle did his best to rise above cliché. But otherwise the sense was of grown men fighting to be heard in the cramped confines of Modi’s back pocket. It wasn’t big and it certainly wasn’t clever.