IPL Guilt: But the Match Must Go On!

Barely few days into the Supreme Court verdict on the infamous son-in-law of BCCI Chief, Gurunath Meiyappan, the most coveted Indian Premier League were auctioned. Players were sold, players were bought and the business went on as usual. Unmindful of the circumstances, all corporate and sports companies which had been looking forward to this auctioning so that they can have a super time shooting the TRPs and booking ad slots, thus adding to their brand equity, were just too thrilled that the auction process went on as expected.

Of course, one of the biggies claimed ‘unfair’ methods being adopted at the auction, which he said has now cost him an additional Rs 4 crore for a single player Yuvraj Singh. And the famous beer baron, who also unsuccessfully tried his hand at giving some good time to people in the skies and turned a huge defaulter to many banks, said the auctioning process was unclear especially with respect to the player he bought and that had to be rectified. Now, this is the same man who still owes crores together to the staff members of his bungled airline company Kingfisher. He had also added the tagline: The king of good times, which now seems rather too stretched and humorous. He happens to be the co-owner of Royal Challengers Bangalore – Vijay Mallya.

Soon after, twitterati and Facebookers were almost laughing out aloud at the allegations and the following complaint Mallya made to IPL Governing Council. “A man who didn’t pay his staff salaries, but went on to splurge on bare-bodied models for his calendar, and buying players at a whopping sum while he still owes banks thousands of crores alleges that the auction was unfair? Now, that’s too much!” were the generic comments made by those who seemed to be amused by Mallya’s behavior. Man really had no takers for his cry for sympathy and some consideration as far as his ‘cries’ were concerned.

The drama that unfolded right at the stage of auctioning is a clear indicator that IPL seems to have kicked off to a good start. A melodramatic opening always promises more entertainment ahead. By now, bookies have acquired new cell phones to mint money, quite oblivious to the verdict that has sounded like a death knell to BCCI chief N Srinivasan. By the time curtain call is made, with all matches being played and cheer girls exhausted after jumping with incredulous and superficial joy each time the ball flies to the pleasure of cricket fans, IPL would have delivered more fun and news than anticipated.

Supreme court verdict came after the committee probing the alleged corruption charges in the IPL matches said in its report that Gururaj Meiyappan “the face and team official” of IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings, headed by Mahendra Singh Dhoni was indeed corrupt. The court ruled that the allegations of betting and passing information to bookies and players, in order to encourage betting for huge sums of money, ‘stand proved’.

In a caution of sorts, the 200 page document submitted to the Supreme Court, the committee had expressed the need to investigate the involvement of Meiyappan and Rajasthan Royals co-owner Raj Kundra need to be investigated further. Supreme Court has upheld the recommendation. The court also felt adequate punishment in the form of life ban was meted out to two players – S Sreesanth and Ankit Chavan, five years of suspension to Amit Singh, and a year-long suspension to Siddharth Trivedi.

Indians have been experiencing quite a few climaxing moments in sports. Earlier this week, the news came in that India was included in Sochi Winter Olympics after being shamed for almost a year, and having just three sports persons walk at the inaugural ceremony under International Olympics Committee flag. Let bygones be bygones, sports persons back home packed their bags in a hurry after IOC generously agreed to include the India which was banned for reasons that it didn’t follow the Olympics charter when it came to selection of sports persons.

Government was pressed into action, minister met all the ‘concerned’ people in order to make things look brighter and made all the arrangements for India to participate in the games again. It was a face-off situation, which still continues to be despite the fact that India finally got to participate in the games. It resembled a last minute hurried addition to list of events, as it would happen in schools!

You see, all that’s well, ends well. What’s with a few months of shame when you still get to hold your flag, with or without pride, at the end of the ceremony. This too shall be forgotten and channels will certainly keep the viewers engaged on IPL enough to wipe out the embarrassment. Then, off we go to make new mistakes again.