[LST] Caught out: Indian Premier League scandal - FT.com

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/560d4120-dec3-11e2-b990-00144feab7de.html?ftcamp=crm/email/2013629/nbe/ArtsLeisure/product#axzz2XasdWGH0



High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this
article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the
article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email
ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/560d4120-dec3-11e2-b990-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2XrvQLapv


ft.com > life&arts >
FT Magazine

SearchAdvanced search
Sign in Site tour Register Subscribe
Home World Companies Markets Global Economy Lex Comment Management Life & Arts
Arts
FT Magazine
Food & Drink
House & Home
Style
Books
Pursuits
Travel
Columnists
How To Spend It
Tools
ShareClipReprintsPrintEmail
June 28, 2013 2:00 pm
Caught out: Indian Premier League scandal
By James Crabtree
Why has Indian cricket been plagued with rumours of corruption and
what can be done to salvage the reputation of the game's biggest and
brashest tournament?
©AFP/Getty Images
Arrested bookmakers and Indian cricketers, including Test bowler
Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, are brought to the Saket district court in
New Delhi
Operation U-turn began late on a humid night in the middle of May,
just yards away from the Arabian Sea. Shanthakumaran Sreesanth pulled
out of Mumbai's Wankhede stadium a little before midnight. His team,
the Rajasthan Royals, had lost that evening's match. But no matter:
drinks were in order, and the star cricketer sped off to a nightclub
in Bandra, a fashionable northern suburb. He had no idea the police
were following him. Or that they had been doing so for weeks.
U-turn took its name from the quiet cul-de-sac at the end of the
city's Marine Drive, where a team of officers waited that evening,
close enough to hear cheers floating over from the ground. Three
squads fanned out across the city: one trailed Sreesanth as he drove
north. It moved in a few hours later, pulling the disorientated bowler
from his car. Two more Rajasthan Royals players were arrested, while
11 bookmakers were taken in a series of night-time raids across the
country. The most serious scandal in the history of the Indian Premier
League (IPL) had begun.
More
IN FT MAGAZINE
The Shrink & The Sage How mindful should we be?
The Inventory Neil Gaiman
The Brazilian lesson shout
London theatregoers, I feel your pain
News of the arrests leaked out quickly, sending India's already
cricket-crazed media into a mania by the time police commissioner
Neeraj Kumar sat down at a press conference in New Delhi later that
afternoon. Kumar seemed weary as he laid out the allegations. A
portly, balding man, the polished silver badges on his uniform glinted
as the cameras flashed. "There was an agreement between the bookies
and the players that in a certain over they would give away a minimum
amount of runs," he said; a scam known as a "spot fix", in which a
small part of a match is rigged, not the final result.
Prearranged signals showed the fix was on, he explained: a hand
gesture, a rotated watch or, in Sreesanth's case, a towel tucked into
his trousers as he sprinted in to bowl. Video clips showed the
suspicious incidents. Bags of cash, filled with as much as $70,000,
were the player's reward. And somewhere, far beyond the stadiums,
massive illegal bets had been laid by groups unnamed – high-rolling
punters, shady betting syndicates and international underworld
criminals. "The mastermind is sitting abroad," was all that Kumar
would say.
©AP
The Star: Shanthakumaran Sreesanth.Indian fast-medium bowler, who has
represented his country in 27 test matches, talks to the media after
he was released from prison in New Delhi this month
The world's biggest, brashest cricket tournament had long struggled
with scandals. But this time was different. Sreesanth was an Indian
international for starters, the first from the IPL's elite cadre to be
caught up in such a scandal. The allegations prompted Narayanaswami
Srinivasan, the head of the Board of Control for Cricket in India
(BCCI), to promise a speedy investigation. But barely a week after the
first arrests the furore escalated further. Just two days before the
IPL's annual grand finale, Srinivasan's own son-in-law, Gurunath
Meiyappan, was taken into custody. The police said Meiyappan had
passed on insider information about another IPL team, the Chennai
Super Kings, which the son-in-law ran, and Srinivasan himself
ultimately controlled.
A south Indian cement mogul turned cricket baron, Srinivasan's role at
the BCCI, which owns the IPL, habitually saw him described as world
cricket's pre-eminent power broker. Now the arrest of a close family
member placed him at the epicentre of an intensifying crisis, sending
India's indignant press into a round-the-clock frenzy of allegations
and resignation demands. Cricket's most powerful man forcefully denied
wrongdoing, and began a grim fight for survival. But the twin arrests
now implied that the IPL's problems were not restricted to a few
bad-apple players. Instead the rot seemed to go close to the top. And
while India's beleaguered cricket lovers continued to debate why a
fabulously well-paid star such as Sreesanth might have risked his
career and freedom for a small bag of money, the roiling scandal began
to raise a deeper question: could the IPL itself survive?
From the moment of its inception in 2007 the IPL had entirely upended
cricket's languid culture of long tea breaks and polite hand claps.
There was money: eight original franchises auctioned off for the best
part of $1bn; billions more in television and sponsorship deals; and
sportsmen used to earning a pittance suddenly taking home $1m or more
for just eight weeks' work. There was glamour: the world's biggest
cricket stars, in teams backed by billionaire tycoons and Bollywood
celebrities, egged on by glamorous cheerleaders and enough blaring
music to more than drown out the gentle thwack of leather on willow.
But more than that the league embodied the spirit of a newly
self-confident nation. The IPL confirmed India, not England or
Australia, as the leading force in global cricket. But its success
also hinted at the towering potential of the superpower to come.
Yet for all its glitz, the tournament was troubled. Orthodox
cricketing types bemoaned the television-friendly Twenty20 short
format and relentless commercialism ruining their mannerly, courteous
game. Players got drunk, fought and were arrested. There were
management bust-ups and questionable finances. In its second year the
entire jamboree moved to South Africa, amid worries over terrorist
attacks. In year three it returned home, only to see its charismatic
architect, Lalit Modi, sacked after another row with Srinivasan's
BCCI. Modi fled to exile in London, talking darkly about assassination
attempts and confirming an air of perpetual rancour and melodrama from
which the IPL never escaped.
©Getty Images
Gurunath Meiyappan (Pictured second from left) the son-in-law of BCCI
president N Srinivasan and team principal of the Chennai Super Kings
was arrested on May 24 in Mumbai
The run of scandals brought to mind a different side of the "new"
India, one of crony capitalism, shabby governance and financial
chicanery. And behind it all lurked the spectre of outright
criminality, in the form of the world's $750bn illegal and grey market
gambling industry. Its stakes and wagers now plague many sports,
including football and tennis, but they have an especially problematic
relationship with cricket.
The issue burst into the open more than a decade ago, when Indian
police released a taped phone call between South African captain
Hansie Cronje and a bookie. The resulting match-fixing crisis saw the
player banned for life, and the game's reputation for gentlemanly
rectitude in tatters. Numerous others followed, notably in 2011, when
a trio of Pakistani bowlers were caught by a British newspaper sting.
They bowled no balls during a test match in London, and ended up in
jail.
That India had a substantial illegal betting industry was therefore no
secret. Much of it operates from Mumbai, even if the bosses are said
to be lying low in Dubai or Pakistan. Their operations gifted the IPL
a minor spot-fixing scandal of its own during 2012: five players were
banned, although all were lesser-paid nonentities, assumed to be
envious of their superstar teammates. But the events leading to
Operation U-turn suggested these links had taken a more serious
direction. And so to find out more, I sat down one morning in the
middle of June, in a fancy hotel in a major Indian city, with a figure
with a long background in the IPL.
The Police


Neeraj Kumar. New Delhi police commissioner
Over coffee in a quiet corner we talked through the uproarious circus
that built up around the league. "It was pretty wild, the parties, the
girls, the nights out," my companion said, before recounting a story
about one of the world's best-known cricketers. "I remember this
player coming to me once, and saying: 'Some people have alcohol
addictions but I have a sex addiction, and I need women. I play better
if I've had sex the night before a match'," he recalled. "And so what
do you say? I called up someone, and told them this and they said
they'd take care of it, they'd make sure the right kind of people were
at our parties." The cheerleaders proved a problem too. "Eventually
they started putting them in different hotels, they learnt pretty
quickly that that was the safer option, to put the cheerleaders a
couple of miles away from the players," he said.
Such incidents were part of a broader picture in which the IPL's
administration, and the franchise owners, took an increasingly
hands-off attitude to their cricketers, and those hanging around them.
"The management became more relaxed, the owners became very
magnanimous, they said: 'Oh, we've just won a match, let the boys
drink, why do you need to be such a pain?' – and at some point people
end up saying why should I bother? Why do I want to be the bad guy and
enforce discipline?"
It was only then, when reflecting on the current crisis, that my
companion said something startling. There was always an information
economy around the teams, he said; people calling and asking for tips
on this or information on that. It seemed harmless at the time. But
looking back on it now he was sure many of those around the upper
reaches of the IPL's circus had been caught up in betting and fixing
in some way. "Some definitely bet themselves, others maybe just pass
on information about the team to friends – and that ends up with
bookies. And some must have been involved in fixing directly too. I'm
sure of it," he said, in a matter-of-fact way.
This link between the IPL's raucous nightlife and the present uproar
isn't obvious, until you learn a little about India's illegal betting
industry. It is often said that spot-fixing allows gamblers to place
bets on small, low-probability elements of matches. If a bowler is
bribed to produce a no ball, say, a punter could bet on this event
alone, earning a fortune. "But that's mostly rubbish, it really
doesn't work that way at all," says Ed Hawkins, a betting expert and
author of Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy, a gripping exposé of India's
betting scene.
©Alamy
Dimitri Mascarenhas of the Rajasthan Royals during the match against
Delhi Daredevils at the IPL T20 match at Sawai Mansingh stadium
The reality is more subtle. The system is run by a handful of larger
syndicates, who work with small teams of freelance bookies. The
syndicates set the odds, while punters call the bookies on any one of
a bank of mobile phones. No cash changes hands; accounts are settled
later. It all operates on word of mouth and trust. And there are just
a few types of wagers, the most popular being the likely score at the
end of the opening period of play, known as a session or "bracket"
bet. "If Sreesanth did what they say he did, it looks like a classic
example of a bracket fix," Hawkins told me, explaining that punters
tend to bet on the score after the first six overs. Here inside
knowledge can be crucial. "It can be really valuable to a big punter,
or to the people who set the odds ... it isn't that you are then
absolutely free to make money. It's not a sure thing but you've now
got the odds in the bracket far more in your favour."
Any tip is useful, from team line-ups to pitch conditions. But the
better the information, the better the return, hence gamblers
increasingly seeking to bribe cricketers directly. "The bookies often
pay off the players and referees around the competition, in the hotels
and the bars," says Chris Eaton, director at the International Centre
for Sport Security, a Qatar-based group that tracks the nefarious
influence of betting on sport. "It might be a honeypot with a girl, or
it could just be cash. It's a slow professional process … and, given
India's growth over the past five years, the size of this illegal
market is growing like crazy."

Narayanaswami Srinivasan, BCCI president, speaking at a news
conference in September last year
Sreesanth spent almost a month in custody in New Delhi, mostly in the
city's notorious Tihar jail, providing time to contemplate how he
might have been caught up in just such a fix. Released on bail on June
11, he has since fiercely protested his innocence, but the ordeal has
taken a toll. "Yesterday there was doctor round to his house, and his
blood pressure has gone right up. He is really shattered. He isn't
going out, except to seek blessings from the gods," says Jayan
Thekkedath, a friend and mentor to the player, explaining the
cricketer's first public outing, to pray at a temple.
To be fair, the evidence against Sreesanth is patchy and
circumstantial. The police case for the towel-in-waistband fix relies
on recorded conversations, allegedly between a bookie and the bowler's
friend, Jiju Janardhan. A journeyman cricketer, Janardhan was arrested
on the same night as Sreesanth, and also denies wrongdoing. "The
police evidence is full of contradictory statements. There is no
transcript of him [Sreesanth] talking to bookies, no transcript of him
talking about fixing with Jiju. There isn't really anything,"
Thekkedath told me. "He is totally clear. He has never cheated at
cricket, he will never cheat at cricket. That is for sure."
Even so, the temperamental 30-year-old got himself mixed up in
something, a fact those who know him seem not to find especially
surprising. They describe a gregarious young man with a passion for
cricket, hugely generous to his friends and great fun to be around,
but also with a strong traditional, religious streak. Yet he was
insecure and attention-seeking too; easily led and prone both to
depression and erratic, impulsive decisions. "He used to compare
himself to Michael Jackson, which I used to think was mad but Michael
Jackson was one of his idols," says a close friend. "When you think
about it, they were a bit the same though: worshipped in one way,
hated in others, surrounded by these weird people, and both a bit
bat-shit crazy."
As much as his impudent wicket-taking celebrations and cocksure style,
Sreesanth was known in India for one incident above all: "slapgate",
when the bowler was struck in the face by Harbhajan Singh, a revered
senior player, during a match in 2008. Sreesanth walked off the pitch,
tears streaming down his cheeks. The cause has never been more than
tabloid speculation but it came to symbolise Sreesanth's image: a
brat, a crybaby, and one whose petulance made him unpopular with
teammates. "Everyone knew [Mahendra Singh] Dhoni hated him," says one
former executive at an IPL team, speaking of India's captain. "In
fact, all the players hated him."
Sreesanth's response was to project himself via an entourage of
hangers-on. "Sree had his lackeys around him constantly, and I always
wondered how they could afford to be with him, given they had no jobs
of their own," says his friend. "I came to realise that he funded
them, and wherever he went, he would ask them to come with him. They
were all 'brother-cousins', they had access to all of his things, his
credit cards, his money, everything." Jiju Janardhan was one of the
most prominent. "I really don't think he [Sreesanth] did it, and we
don't know what happened ... but one theory I can very much see is
that these bookies would be buttering up some of the people around
him, and, if they could convince them to do something stupid, maybe
they might have convinced Sree."
. . .
Sreesanth's fate now lies with India's police, as well as an
investigation by the BCCI. Even if proven innocent, his international
career is surely over. The battle for the future of Indian cricket,
however, has barely begun. A ferocious internal power struggle kicked
off after the arrests, as BCCI head Srinivasan launched a dogged
rearguard action to cling on to his job. It was a sight that dismayed
the body's treasurer, a courteous businessman turned cricket
administrator called Ajay Shirke. Initially alarmed by what he
describes as the BCCI's slapdash investigation plans, Shirke also
began to re-examine some of the self-evident conflicts of interest
that flowed from Srinivasan's roles as a cricket regulator,
administrator and team boss.
©Getty
Protests: Demonstators in Bangalore vent their anger against the
match-fixing scandal last month
Gurunath Meiyappan had denied wrongdoing. But Srinivasan's defence
that his arrested son-in-law hadn't really been in charge at the
Chennai Super Kings, absolving the BCCI head of responsibility, seemed
especially unconvincing. "The simplistic explanation was given that
Gurunath was just an enthusiast," Shirke told me. "He doesn't run the
team, he is just a hobbyist, who just happens to be my son-in-law. But
then why had he been there at every auction representing the team, why
had he been notified in our official documents as the team principal,
and what is he doing in the dugout with the players? To me it really
looked like they are just trying to cling on to power."
Sitting in his family's home near Pune in late May, Shirke began to
contemplate what needed to be done. He announced his resignation a few
days later, a shock move that set off a further furore. Events came to
a head during a BCCI crisis summit, in a plush conference room at the
Park Sheraton in Chennai, on Sunday June 2. By the meeting's end, and
only two weeks after Operation U-Turn began, Srinivasan, the most
powerful man in world cricket, had stepped aside, temporarily at
least. In the days that followed, the BCCI's new interim head
hurriedly announced a raft of clean-up measures: team owners were to
be banned from mingling with players during matches, while the IPL's
legendary after-match parties were to be banned and the cheerleaders
too – measures few analysts think will do much to fend off the
bookies, and those that lie beyond.
And will the IPL itself survive? Yes, if there are no further arrests
and assuming no evidence of actual match-fixing emerges. It might even
get cleaner. "There is a huge public anger against corruption in the
game, but I feel it will now be better run than it has ever been,
given they will be forced to take measures to make it as clean as
possible," says R Mohan, a veteran cricket writer and editor at the
Deccan Chronicle newspaper. "Many of the changes will be cosmetic but
there will be lots more surveillance. Things can improve."
Yet others offer a more depressing view of what the IPL has become: a
once-mighty totem of India's rising promise that stands besmirched; a
symbol of this emerging superpower's darker shortcomings. "The Indian
public's memory is very short, and next season a lot of this will be
forgotten," says Harsh Goenka, a respected industrialist, who has
previously looked at buying an IPL franchise. "Sadly it's a bit like
[US televised] wrestling. Everyone knows that it is fixed, but you
don't know the actual result, and so it's still exciting. And while
some wrestling is 100 per cent fixed, maybe the IPL is just 1 per cent
fixed. So people will still go, that's how it is."
James Crabtree is the FT's Mumbai correspondent.
To comment, please email magazineletters@FT.com.
Next week: Matthew Engel on English village cricket
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013. You may share using our
article tools.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or
post to the web.
ShareClipReprintsPrintEmail
Most Popular on Social Networks
Winklevoss twins plan to float Bitcoin stash
Edward Snowden applies for asylum in Russia
Egypt's army gives politicians 'last chance' to end crisis
Obama and the crumbling of a liberal fantasy hero
Even the British left is turning against Europe
US gas exports give Mexico competitive edge over other countries
Hollande demands halt to 'unacceptable' US spying
Perpetual pilots are the new goal for strategy
Anaemic manufacturing data raise China growth fears
Europe's spy technology expertise throws up awkward questions
Banks charged with blocking CDS market
Nokia to pay €1.7bn to buy Siemens out of telecoms joint venture
Three dead as hundreds of thousands protest against Morsi
The EU will regret terminating a banking union
Apple paid no UK corporation tax in 2012
Croatia proves that Brussels has transformed the Balkans
Banking is heading towards its Spotify moment
Wary of the peso, Argentines try a new form of payment
Obama's trip to Africa is too little - and very late
Norway's opposition mulls oil fund split
Post your own comment
To comment, you must sign in or register Sign inRegister
Comments
Sorted by newest first | Sort by oldest first
ReportRR-3 | June 30 5:44am | Permalink
Agree with most of article and it is mostly on the money!

'Kumar seemed weary as he laid out the allegations. A portly, balding
man, the polished silver badges on his uniform glinted as the cameras
flashed', what has Mr. Kumar's physical appearance has to with
corruption in IPL? That is saying David Cameron's looks effect British
GDP.

Wonder, why doesn't Ft find some time and space to depict the evils of
european soccer leagues. Racism, Illegal betting, Game fixing,
involvement and ownership of clubs by dubious individuals, Drugs and
underage sex and not mention the people who run FIFA.

IPL is not disliked by English lead group its brashness or after match
parties but the economies of it. Sour grapes!

And Cricket was never a gentlemen's game.

EDITOR'S CHOICE
LIFE & ARTS
©Grayson Perry The full English: Grayson Perry on the appeal of art as
social storytelling
LUNCH WITH THE FT
©James Ferguson Prabowo Subianto, former commander of Indonesia's special forces

MOST POPULAR IN LIFE & ARTS
Books: Summer books guide
Magazine: Mark Carney is the new broom
Arts: Simon Schama meets Grayson Perry
Lunch with the FT: Prabowo Subianto
Magazine: Indian Premier League scandal
LIFE AND ARTS ON TWITTER

More FT Twitter accounts
HIGHLIGHTS
TRANSFORMING INDUSTRY
How is tech changing your industry?
Q&A ONLINE LEARNING
Is an online MBA for you? The FT panel of expert advises

MOST RECENT FROM LIFE & ARTS The full English Lunch with the FT:
Prabowo Subianto The way Michael Jackson made us feel Summer books
special Pedalling into the past
FINANCIAL TIMES JOBS
Search
General Manager
NUT/Stoke Rochford Hall
Vice President - Queensgate Investments LLP
Real Estate Private Equity
FTSE50 Finance Director
FTSE 50
Register for free to receive the latest executive jobs by email
TOOLS & SERVICES
Multimedia
Video
Blogs
Podcasts
Interactive graphics
Audio slideshows
Picture slideshows
Tools
Portfolio
FT Lexicon
FT clippings
Currency converter
MBA rankings
Newslines
Today's newspaper
FT press cuttings
FT ebooks
FT ePaper
Economic calendar
Updates
Alerts Hub
Daily briefings
FT on Facebook
FT on Twitter
FT on your mobile
Share prices on your phone
RSS feeds
Quick links
FT Live
Mergermarket
How to spend it
Social Media hub
The Banker
The Banker Database
fDi Intelligence
fDi Markets
Professional Wealth Management
This is Africa
Investors Chronicle
MandateWire
FTChinese.com
Pensions Week
Services
Subscriptions
Corporate subscriptions
Education subscriptions
Syndication
FT Fine Wine Plan
Conferences
Annual reports
Executive job search
Non-Executive Directors' Club
Businesses for sale
Contracts & tenders
Analyst research
Commercial Property listings
Company announcements
FT Collection
Help •Contact us •About us •Sitemap •Advertise with the FT •Terms &
conditions •Privacy policy •Copyright •Cookie policy
© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2013 FT and 'Financial Times' are trademarks
of The Financial Times Ltd.

--
Saurav Datta

Twitter: SauravDatta29
Mobile : +91-9930966518

"To those who believe in resistance, who live between hope and
impatience and have learned the perils of being unreasonable. To those
who understand enough to be afraid and yet retain their fury."

Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "LST-LAW SCHOOL TUTORIALS" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clat-11+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.