It’s
been a while since I’ve written on cricket.
Not
because there hasn’t been anything to write about – but because most of my own
thoughts have been expressed, far more eloquently than I could have managed, by
a host of far more knowledgeable writers. I’ve therefore restricted myself to
enjoying reading those articles, instead of sharing my own little wisdom on
them. I see no point in just amplifying the noise on a subject for the sake of
contributing sound bytes.
Having
said that, why then this article? That’s because, on the recent spot-fixing
drama, there are some elements that I didn't quite find sufficiently (if at all) discussed in all the material that I came across. Of course, it's possible that I've missed something out there.
I’ve
read a fair number of articles on the subject. And heard some other views too.
They range from the extremes of “ban the IPL” (Sharad Yadav) to “it’s just
three dirty men” (BCCI chairman, N. Srinivasan). In between, there are a whole
host of views.
What
I do notice – and very unsurprisingly – is a lot of IPL-bashing. And a lot of
BCCI-bashing. For many, the IPL and the BCCI almost seem to be interchangeable,
such has become the IPL’s influence on Indian cricket.
Before
I go on, I think I must first state unambiguously where I stand on the IPL.
I do
have some issues with the IPL. I don’t like the excessive commercialism, the
loud commentary, the hype, the artificiality around it. And I must be honest –
I find it difficult to respect batting when mishits and top edges go for a six.
It is the worst form of an unequal contest between bat and ball that you can
imagine. That both sides in the match operate within the same framework, isn’t
exactly compensatory consolation. In the forty years that I’ve been following
the game, the contest between bat and ball has always been holy.
But
I’ve made my peace with the IPL over the years. And now, during IPL season, I
enjoy it for what it is. I don’t compare it with other forms of cricket. And, if
I manage to ignore all its irritants, I do often enjoy its thrills and tension.
Test cricket will always be special for me – but the IPL has found its relevance
too in my cricket following pursuits.
Now,
onto spot-fixing and the IPL.
I
think it is a bit unfair to make the IPL THE villain of the piece. It has its
weaknesses but it is not THE reason we’re having spot-fixing. The IPL is just a
tournament – and now the world’s most popular cricket tournament. So what do we
want to do – ban it? We need to realize that cricket is competing with other
sports (and other forms of entertainment) for eyeballs. The IPL, for a few
weeks every year, attracts millions of followers of other sports/entertainment
options to cricket. How is that not good for the game?
The
problem lies elsewhere. It lies in not realizing significant underlying
fundamental weakness in a system. Let me give an example.
Think
of an unhygienic kitchen. If the hottest-selling item is soup – and a large number of customers who’re
complaining of food poisoning happen to be soup customers - just removing the
soup from the menu isn’t going to help. The complaints will continue – they
will just come from customers of other products. The soup was never the
problem. The problem was the unhygienic kitchen.
The
soup is the IPL. The BCCI is the kitchen. And the food poisoning is the fixing.
Let’s
admit that there was spot-fixing before the IPL. And there will be spot-fixing
after the IPL, if nothing else changes.
What
needs to be done is to build strength in the system to prevent food poisoning.
For
its part, sadly, the BCCI’s reactions to the whole drama have been entirely
predictable. Starting with “expressing shock”, then soundbytes like “strictest
action will be taken against the three involved” (at that time there were three
known perpetrators, amongst the players). Of course the BCCI is “fully
co-operating with the police”.
The
overriding tone of the BCCI has been to defend the IPL, protect its image, to
blame everything on “these three dirty men”, to play the age-old game of
stating the problem to be way too complex - “we do our best but we cannot
possibly monitor 200 players”.
All
oh-so-predictable, anybody could have written the script and given it to the media,
without their bothering the BCCI bigwigs at all.
What I'd have liked to have seen discussed more is some of the following:
1) The
system and the players
It
says a lot about what I think about cricket and cricketer ethics in
today’s day and age, that the news of the spot-fixing scandal broke out a few
days ago, I didn’t have the slightest sense of shock or surprise. Contrast this
with April 2000. When the Cronje story began unraveling (and Indian players,
including one of my then-favourites, captain Azharuddin, began getting named),
I remember being STUNNED. In denial. Sick in the stomach. Depressed for months.
This
time, with the Sreesanth episode? Nothing!
At
the most, I can only say that I was disappointed that Sree had done this. I
rated him as one of the better opening bowlers we’ve had in Test cricket in recent
times – and would have been happy to see him back in the Test side. So I was
disappointed that he chose to take this short-cut route to riches.
But I
wasn’t surprised.
The IPL
had got him good money - but when your aspirations exceed your ability to
support them through legitimate means, you seek other means.
Sree
had got used to the fast lane - money, fame, celebrity status, an expensive
lifestyle. And on the cricketing front, life was going in exactly the opposite
direction. The more he “needed” that wealth, the less his chances of getting it
through normal cricketing efforts. His chances of getting back to the Indian
side were fast receding. Not only for performance reasons but also because of
his “terribly difficult person” image. And he was 30.
Imagine, then somebody comes along and tells him “Why do you worry? Bowl one bad over,
and I’ll give you 50 lakhs”.
Come
on! It’s the IPL – matches are played daily at such a frenzied pace. Where
games are totally loaded in favour of batsmen, with short boundaries and a lot
more. Where even the best of bowlers often go for sixes and fours.
Who’s
going to notice an over going for 15 runs? So many overs go for much more than
that.
And
once the game’s over, it’s time to move on to the next. Nobody even remembers
yesterday’s game. Yesterday’s gone.
All
you see is the 50 lakhs in front of your eyes. That’s real – everything else is
make-believe.
And
hey, you don’t have to feel ashamed or awkward. It’s happening all the time –
happened last year too. It’s so easy to do, it’s almost a no-brainer.. Think
about YOUR future. If you don’t secure it NOW, when you can – when are you
going to do it? You think your franchise cares about where you are in 5 years’
time? You think anybody cares?
So
THIS is the player dilemma.
What would I do if I were in Sreesanth’s position?
Speaking
purely for myself, I know I wouldn’t have gone with the offer (I say this
because I HAVE refused very attractive financial deals in the past purely because they would
have troubled my conscience). But that’s me – and I don’t have
material aspirations like a Sreesanth does. So instead of using myself
personally as a yardstick, I’m going to generalize a bit.
I cannot help
feeling that many people – especially those with aspirations far outstripping
ability - would probably do what Sreesanth did. It is JUST SO EASY to do. And
there’s SO MUCH MONEY to make.
No,
I’m not defending Sreesanth here. I’m just trying to be a little more realistic
than some of those moral policemen out there. Suddenly Sreesanth has become devil incarnate – all I’m trying to say is it could just have been any A, B or
C.
It is
the SYSTEM that has weaknesses. An individual – while having his own mind – can
easily fall prey to this system if he is not strong enough.
We
keep talking about Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Kumble and Laxman as examples of
cricketers who didn’t fall for the bait. We need to realize that these are
successful, secure cricketers with long careers. They have received affection
from millions of fans, for years – and have internalized this love. That has
also made them strong – and relatively less vulnerable to being manipulated by
devious third parties.
But
that’s just five cricketers. There are many more out there – and many in
domestic cricket – who do not enjoy this luxury. Of financial success. Of love. Some have an early sense of rejection. What’s to say they don’t have
aspirations? In today’s India, aspirations seem to be everything – just look
around you at the advertisements in the media.
THESE
are the people most vulnerable to manipulation. Cricket can be cruel. Only
eleven can make a team. You feel like a reject if you aren’t in that eleven.
Especially if that happens on a consistent basis.
The
IPL just happens to have many players in this category. They wouldn’t make it to the
national team – but they enjoy recognition and fame for a few weeks every year,
thanks to the IPL. And of course they make good money, better than they’d
otherwise have made. But that may just fuel their aspirations to a different
level altogether.
So I
repeat – when legitimate means are
insufficient to bridge the aspiration-ability gap, in many cases, illegitimate
means will be resorted to, if they come with acceptably low (in this case
near-zero) risk. The ends will justify the means.
2) Corrective measures
a) Be realistic about effectiveness of
“mentoring”: After this broke out, the first thing I heard from some BCCI
campists was “we need to improve mentoring”. I yawned. Had this been the year
2000, I might have bought this. At that time, there might have been a genuine
case of fixing - and the shady-bookie menace - catching everybody on the wrong
foot. The whole concept might have been new for some.
Today,
in 2013, it is known to one and all involved with the game that this is THE
biggest menace in the game. If a player is smart enough to win an IPL contract,
he is smart enough to understand what is right and wrong. So now we need to “educate" a cricketer that if you don’t bowl like a bowler normally would, it is a
wrong thing to do?
Yes,
there are some cricketers out there who are suddenly thrown into the world of
riches and glamour. Yes, they need to be cautioned about its negative side too. That they may have undesirable people trying to associate with
them. And these may try to make them do things that go against the grain of the
game that has made them what they are.
So let's have THIS level of mentoring. But we don’t need to make it sound any more
effective than it really is. Repeated emphasis on it only tells me that the
BCCI is trying to avoid other, more difficult to implement, solutions to
address the issue.
Look at it this way. If a Rahul Dravid, considered THE role-model for one and
all to uphold the spirit of the sport, can have his own team mates selling
their souls behind his back, what chance does some “mentor” have? The
intoxication of money, coupled with the near zero-risk, will drown any
well-meaning mentor’s words in an instant. Maybe I’m being a bit skeptical here
but I don’t think players quite have as much respect for other players and
officials as is often made out by the romanticists. Of course, everything is
hunky-dory in public. But in private, each person has to fight his own battle.
b) Be realistic about Anti-Corruption Units:
I would have found this laughable if the
emotion of anger did not overwhelmingly dominate my mixed emotions. The ICC’s
solution to prevent corruption in the game is its “Anti-Corruption and Security
Unit” (ACSU). Never mind that their track record in uncovering corruption has
been laughable, but the ICC still offered the services of this unit to the BCCI
for IPL2. At a price of course.
The
BCCI politely (or maybe not so politely) refused the offer, saying it was
setting up its own ACSU unit. Interestingly, it’s been almost four years now –
and this ACSU seems to be competing with the ICC’s ACSU in the ineffectiveness
race.
To me
– and maybe I’m being harsh here – setting up this ACSU was never really going
to solve anything. It sounds good on paper, it’s one of those ISO9000 type
things. You do it because it then “looks” like “you’ve got the processes in
place” and therefore things “should be under control”.
In
reality, what are the ACSU’s powers? Can they tap phone messages or other types
of communications between players and others? Or is it that they are just present at
matches and keep a look-out for suspicious characters? Like in an old-fashioned
detective novel.
Let’s
accept that the few culprits that have been caught so far, have been caught,
not by an ACSU, but by another entity.
It
was the Delhi police who stumbled upon Hansie Cronje’s activities by accident.
It
was a sting operation by the media that exposed Salman Butt and two of his
team-mates in England in 2010.
It
was the Delhi police again who stumbled upon Sreesanth and co’s activities this
time, while looking for something completely different.
What
has the BCCI’s ACSU been doing? Why did
it not pick up any signals? From the communication the Delhi police have, it is
clear that there was fixing involved in IPL5 as well. This lends credence to
the feeling that the three who got caught are the unlucky ones – there are
others out there who’ve got away.
So
much for the BCCI setting up an Anti-Corruption Unit!
And
now, at its latest meeting, the BCCI has said it will be setting up ACSUs for
each franchise! Great! Another great initiative on paper. But please excuse me
if I’m not exactly holding my breath on expecting more cases to be caught and
booked.
The
point is – this is all INTERNAL. The players are contracted to the BCCI, they
are the marketable property of the BCCI, the IPL is the BCCI’s most valuable
property. So there is naturally going to be a conflict of interest for the BCCI
to take strict action against any of these “properties”. At the most, the BCCI
may sacrifice a lesser player as a scapegoat, to build credibility about its
processes. Other than that, it is unlikely to rock its boat too much.
And
that is why what we need is EXTERNAL.
The ACSU
is like internal audit. It is important to have – it sets up processes with
checks and balances, it does audits – and it reports deviations it comes across
to management. And thereafter it’s upto management’s discretion whether to take
further action or not. (I think in practice the ACSU isn’t even doing so much,
but I’ll give it credit for now).
What
we need is an external auditor-like authority. One who doesn’t care about the
BCCI. Who isn’t paid by the BCCI. Who is empowered to do what it takes to check
compliance. And who will objectively report its findings - not to the BCCI -but to a third party.
And
who has the skills to do so.
In
effect, we are talking about a policing function. Much like what the Delhi
police have done now.
I
don’t think the ACSU quite cuts it. Not one ACSU, not ten ACSUs. I’m afraid the
nefarious world of illegal betting and bookies is much too smart for the
administrative type, watchdog type entity that the ACSU is. And extremely
ruthless. I understand that a cop who filed an FIR in this matter was killed a
few days ago.
I
know the police is short of resources already but if the figure of Rs.40,000
crores being talked about as the value of illegal betting business in India is
true, then it seems to be well worth dedicating police resources to this. It is
not just about individual cricketers – it is about cleaning up the muck in the entire system.
c) Have more “sting operations”: In India, the media has largely been
reactive. Yet, there have been stories broken by the media that have been
key to keeping politicians on their toes, and keeping the public aware of
happenings. I know “sting operations” tend to have a negative connotation about
them, but I believe, if the purpose isn’t unethical, they are great to expose
crime and malpractice.
Last year, during the IPL, a sting operation by a TV channel exposed a few cricketers for wrongdoing. It was roundly criticized initially but the
evidence was irrefutable and the cricketers were finally given due punishment.
We need more of this to happen. If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to
worry about. The “sting operation” can even be conducted by a private party and
then shared with the media.
These
are some of the corrective measures I can think about. This is by no means an
exhaustive list. And I think we need every measure out there that helps reduce
(I’m realistic enough not to say “eliminate”) this scourge of fixing. I see it
as THE biggest menace in the game of cricket today.
What’s very frustrating is that the BCCI just does not seem to recognize the
magnitude of the issue. It does some tinkering here and there, hoping that
things will sort themselves out, in due course of time. We all know that’s not
how these things work.
It is OUR game. The game for the fans of cricket. And for me personally, it is a game that I’ve been passionately
following for the last 40 years. I’m damned if I’m going to just sit quiet and
see it dying in front of my eyes. Even if I can’t stop it, I’m at least going
to make a noise about it.
