Get real jokers in the IPL-6 commentary box.

If Navojyot Sidhu comes out as a colorful chatter-box  in the studio-commentary box , then there’s no stopping Sanjay Manjrekar from gushing out questions at the presentation ceremony . IPL 6, in order to drive hard their stress on the entertainment,  have made watching slam-bang T20 cricket largely a mindless exercise where cricketing points loose their conventional conservative perspectives.  Looks like the heat gets to the commentators first than the cricketers, who of course have to toil is hard under the grueling heat of new Delhi and do not know how to react to inane queries after a heat-sapping game .

In the on-field commentary box,  commentators gloss over easily-given runs to effects of heat but spend two overs chattering with a slip-fielder at the start of an innings. If the fielder was expected to multi-task, he miserably failed when he dived over an on-drive for a boundary.  Alan Wilkins had parachuted to IPL 6  for commentary and he , of course,  minced no words at a bowler’s lack of overt drive for stopping runs or taking wickets. Wilkins has disappeared since then. Probably got grounded . Not a single word otherwise from any of the other commentators about the match-fixing controversy that is threatening to erupt into a politically-inconvenient issue except for some oblique hints by calling it , “a difficult week.” And all these are cricket experts with supposedly a lot of support for the ethics of cricket, which once used to be called “a gentleman’s game.”

Since commentary is  also part he 360 degree entertainment package that classifies IPL, its better to probably get stand-up comedians with even working knowledge of cricket to substitute these overpaid & overage bunch . 

10 questions to Delhi Police who tracked-and-posted the spot-fixing scandal in IPL 6

The Commissioner of Delhi Police (CP) was a hassled  man for the past few months. For doing first what Delhi Police does best  i.e thrashing (actually water-cannoning, lathi-charging , tear-gassing etc.)  the daylights out of student protesters on Delhi streets. The students were protesting the ghastly attack on a young woman in a bus and demanding better security for women in Delhi. But when incidents of rape (some of them clearly macabre & violent too) stopped going down , the city was buzzing with demands of resignation from the CP.  Hence , when the lid on the spot-fixing scandal in IPL broke out a few days back amidst a press conference called by the same CP, the scenario was different. Basking in the glory of having cracked a major case (though involving minor players) with  "strong" evidences to press a charge-sheet against them, the CP was looking more like a DC,DD with a touch of irony & sarcasm laced in his answers almost bringing to mind the images of the iconic figure of Holmes rocking in his easy-chair answering Watson's questions.

Now, a CP is "the"  top cop. He is supposed to be more than the sum of all his roles; field officer, detective, investigator, administrator, crime-tracker & reader of criminal minds. So when he sat  a-la-Holmes during that press conference explaining as to how his team of ever-alert inspectors chanced on a phone tap between an overseas underworld member and a bookie in India and thereby collected with permissions,  phone conversations among  all people under suspicion that run to more than 100 hours (that's roughly greater than the size of a 2500 +pages transcript); the press weren't surprised but definitely looked amazed. This chance clue over a phone led them on to players of one IPL team targeted apparently by 11 bookies from around the world. The CP was pretty confident & categorical when he said that no other player or team or owner/manager was involved . This case is just about limited to the 14 who've been arrested.

Now , now that was a good job, prima facie, by the Delhi Police although the smirk on the CP's face could also relate to complete stoppage of earlier demands for his sack. But then the disclosures do not give a loophole-free account of this chance-tap-arrest story. Here are ten questions for Delhi Police that still needs answers.

Apparently Feroz , a Mumbai hit man, had asked for names of bookies while talking over phone with Tiger Memon , the alleged mastermind of 1993 blasts, in Dubai. Based on this chance tap , Inspector Badrish Dutta , since deceased, got clearance from his higher authorities in Delhi Police to conduct a 150 days long electronic stake-out of Feroz and his conversations with various bookies & others. So here are the questions.

1. Why was Delhi Police eavesdropping on Feroz's phone and how did they get hold of his number, in the first place?
2. And since the late policeman Badrish Dutta , who is credited with the first catch, can't verify this part of the story; did Badrish leave behind a written request to his authorities for a stake-out? Can the Delhi Police produce that note? Otherwise Badrish Dutta 's discovery will be legally unverifiable and non-tenable and no one would believe the story that Delhi Police chanced upon the bookies. 
3. The cops from Delhi Police visited the hotels where players from Rajasthan Royals (RR) were staying in Delhi , Mumbai, Ahmedabad among others. Were the Delhi Police keeping a tap on players from opponent teams too? or was the net spread only for players in RR?
4. The cops finally arrested the 3 accused RR players from their hotels in Mumbai. Did the cops seize any cash , and if so, of what amount, in the custody of players? If they didn't seize the cash, then how can they prove that the victims benefitted from the "tapped " conversation with the bookies?
5. If the players  did receive cash for under-performing, whom were the cheating ? Who are specifically the victims in this "crime?" Leaving aside the legally-untenable argument that fans-at-large were cheated , was it the BCCI or was it the ICC  that were victims of crime? Surely the money-trail , if any, didn't leave the above-named short-changed in any manner.
6. How will Delhi Police prepare the charge- sheet, based on whose complaint? Has the Anti Corruption Unit of the BCCI filed any FIR for violating Clause 1 & its various sub-clauses? How will criminal conspiracy be established if there aren't any apparent victims? or Will it just finally be  a civil violation of contract that players signed with IPL?
7. The investigators found 5 laptops containing names , aliases & phone numbers of bookies all over the country. Why didn't the Delhi Police conduct a nation-wide raid to nab all these bookies but restricted themselves to only players from one team and their bookies?
8. The cops talk in confident tones referring to the link with  the stereotyped bogey , Dawood Ibrahim. Did the Delhi Police find any evidence to link Dawood to the players? Otherwise the case against the players of "engaging in a criminal conspiracy with a "terrorist"  & "outlaw" will not stand-up to legal scrutiny.
9.  The CP sounded very confident when he mentioned while answering reporters' questions that no other team or no other player is involved. One felt he was ruling out the possibility completely even before they could arise. Was the CP under instruction to keep his mouth shut about others because a logical statement would've been to allow further investigations to decide the course of the events and discover names of other players/managers/coaches/stuff/owners ?
10. When will the Delhi Cops make the phone recordings public in order for public to separate the truth from the half-truths or even falsities?   

 

10 ways to signal a bookie during a "fixed" IPL match

Yesterday, the Commissioner of Delhi Police explained the modus operandi in a press conference as to how under-performing bowlers signaled to the bookie that the promised fix is now going live. According to the cops who were reading from the call-transcripts (I hope the audio clips will find their way to the Internet, soon) , they were  told by the bookies  not to do anything unusual. The signals used before start of an over were tucking in a towel, wearing a wrist-band or rotating the watches. Quite unusual, one might say, if you're doing such things in the second over or later. Here's 10 casual & useful  moves that could  be construed as the signal for the fixed-up bowlers or batsmen in the future matches.



Cartoon Source: Sudhir Talang

1. Change the batting gloves.
2. Do not remove the sunglasses while bowling.
3. Ask for adjustment of sight-screen
4. Open and tighten the shoelaces of both feet.
5. Take off the helmet & wear it again.
6. Start the over with a dummy run-up.
7. Take your stance, stop the bowler in the run-up and then stroll over to mid-pitch for a quick chat with the other batsman.
8. Bowl six quick practice balls to the mid-off or mid-on fielder.
9. Knock the pitch at good-length spot ten times with the bat.
10. Wave repeatedly to any far-off fielder for a slight change in fielding position.  

Illussion of corruption hangs over the Indian (under)Performance League as KIngs XI trounce Delhi Daredevils

Photo Source: Cricinfo

The Kings XI Punjab (KXI) played a match in the picturesque (not visible on screen as this was a night match) Dharamshala against Delhi Daredevils(DD)  in order to decide who was going to occupy the bottom half of the bottom half if you leave Pune Warriors (PWI) aside. Quite a contrarian situation to that in PWI's match against  KKR at Ranchi , two days ago that turned out have been  upsetted by the kick on a ball-in-play by Yusuf "most-valuable-player" Pathan. Pathan , who has somehow  managed to blossom at the fag end of this edition of IPL, was given out for obstructing the ball on 72 and KKR lost the slim chance to stay in game for the qualifiers. Never mind that the top order of Gambhir, Kallis, Bisla  failed with the bat while Kallis disappointed with ball too. Like that day,  KXI 's fate hung by a thin thread to fortunes of other teams for the qualifiers.

But then the emotions at the KXI-DD match had a strong under-current of skepticism. The events that had developed at the start of the day when 3 players of RR , currently playing in IPL6), were arrested by Delhi Police from their Mumbai hotels on allegations of spot-fixing the day after RR's last match with MI. Although the commentators avoided the 'f' word , spectators were watching with their third eyes. Fans are not sure whether what looks like reality is just an illusion or whether an illusion is    indistinguishable from reality in real life, anyway.

 Like for instance, when Morne Morkel was bowling his pair of short-pitched lollipops and good-length snorters , an swashbuckling off-drive from Gilchrist was flying   away to the point boundary when out came Umesh Yadav on the screen . Umesh was standing right on the boundary and didn't move an inch when the ball landed on his folded hands and then just bounced out . Was that Morne Morkel's "promised runs" or Umesh Yadav's  folly or whatever?  Soon after another ferocious cut from Shawn Marsh flew over the empty second slip as Sehwag dived full-length to the left (that's a rare sight) only to miss touching the ball by inches. And then Siddhart Kaul took a stunning catch (see photo)  to dismiss Azhar Mehmood. Looked like the players were trying to perform 120% to avoid any suspicion. In the end David Miller thumped Umesh Yadav & Siddhart Kaul  alike as KXI beat DD by 7 runs & stands hangs with a slim chance of going to the qualifiers.

Photo Source : IPL official photo archives

Aditya Tare sparkles in a IPL match sullied by spot-fixing allegations

As the Indian Premier League (IPL) coasts away to unprecedented success in its 6th edition with television signals getting beamed onto reportedly 198 countries, recession seems to be a word absent from the dictionary of BCCI, the rich & powerful cricket control board of India.

IPL is a T20 cricket tournament played in a league format among 9 teams that are named after nine cities and are owned by nine moneybags out of which  3 are family-managed industrialists, 3 are film stars, 1 is a non-certified Collective Investment Scheme (CIS) operator,  1 is a media baron-cum-airline owner & only 1 is a corporate group.  Out of the 3 industrialists; 1 is a liquor baron-cum airline owner, 1 is oil & gas and retail-store major and 1 is the President of BCCI . IPL league may have the adjective 'premier' prefixed to it but in reality, there are no other leagues below it. IPL kind of floats on air. There are no relegation rules applicable for the bottom teams since there isn't any other league to relegate it to. Hence there's no promotion of the top teams of the non-existent lower league. As far as the business model from BCCI's perspective is concerned , it's a surefire winner. After all BCCI collects Rs. 40 crores per franchisee annually besides huge annuity that it gets for having auctioned off its marketing & television rights. It's the finances of the franchise owners that are under a lot of cloud since none of these teams have a publicly listed balance sheet. Only one team had it earlier. The erstwhile Deccan Chargers, who were owned by the Deccan Chronicle owners, had a balance sheets in public domain since they were a listed company. But subsequently they fell into large debts and sold off the franchisee to a media baron from the south. With a small control group of 9 owners and with their mostly-hidden finances , one is not sure how the franchisees make their money. They annually pay  Rs. 40 crores to BCCI , another 60 crores for players and hence its expected they must make at least 200 crores annually from ticket sales, merchandise, sponsorships and the likes. Quite a tall order by any standards and definitely the least exciting way to make money if you look at the profile of owners.

What's the missing link in the revenue stream? There have been hush-hush talks of  owners making money through betting & fixing and/or laundering their black money into IPL. These are only allegations and some would say of the flying variety. But then when suddenly three players (including a World Cup winning member) of  one particular team gets arrested on charges of spot-fixing by the Delhi Police , there's bound to be allegations  that will not only be flying but piercing as well. Delhi Police held a press conference to show clippings from three matches involving one particular team, Rajasthan Royals, as evidences. The last of those pertained to the match between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) held last night at the Wankhade Stadium where Sachin Tendulkar didn't take part on account of an injury. RR lost the match by 14 runs , exactly the amount of runs that a RR spinner, Ankit Chavan, was alleged by the Delhi police of having fixed  with a bookie for a consideration of Rs. 60 lakhs. A clear case where spot fixing an over for 14 years led to match fixing.      



 

The MI versus RR match had some moments of its own. Rahul Dravid was given caught behind when he tried to swish a Mitchell Johnson bouncer to the leg side. Television replays showed that the umpire's finger went up faster than the two pairs of  hands of the bowler & wicket- keeper who went up in a casual appeal. Dravid , whose legendary ice-cool exterior can be compared only to that of Bjorn Borg the tennis-great, was not amused and he could be seen muttering something from behind the cage of his helmet. They looked like expletives aimed at the umpire, Asnani.  Malinga  used his legally-permissible-fifteen-degree-hand-swing ( an euphemism for legal throws) in the death overs to choke the RR batsmen of a possible victory. But the cricketing pudding was in the arrival of Aditya Tare (see photos), a promising newcomer whose bating seems to be a heady punch of Dravid's technique & Tendulkar's creative aggression, who made a quick-fire 59 driving Faulkner to three boundaries in one particular over.



But now with the spot-fixing allegations against players of RR, fans &  skeptics  would pore through the videos of matches to discover more such signals given by erring bowlers to the bookies and  their profligacy in bowling. Interestingly RR have been experimenting with their batting order and teams every second game. And even this particular game against MI was no exception when they brought in Faulkner as a pinch-hitter. The experiment hardly succeeded. In one particular match against the KKR at Eden Gardens , RR got their captain Dravid to bat at number 8 (which Dravid justified by saying they were following horses-for-courses strategy on a dusty pitch such as at Eden ) instead of his customary place as the opener. A place where a slow batter like Dravid finds sufficient time to anchor his presence and build a larger score for his team. RR lost that match against KKR , completely against their run of consecutive victories preceding the match. To take the attention away from RR , take the match between MI and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) where the super-performer Pollard dropped three consecutive catches of Mike Hussey at point but managed to hold on to the fourth ,a skier,  sometimes later. 

Like always, fresh allegations with evidences always put the spot light on the entire tournament as people hardly believe in a localized event such as the one reported today.  Specially if one remembers the context of an oligarchy of 9 teams, limited streams of revenue for the franchisees and the lack of transparencies of the books of the franchisees. Although the BCCI chief and Chennai Super Kings owner ( can you see the conflict of interest here? Well BCCI can't) , N. Srinivasan has promised to root out spot-fixing  from IPL , fans are aware that such lip-services from an insider hold no credibility.  Allegations of match-fixing, spot-fixing have been doing the rounds of Indian cricket for more than a decade now and save for banning cricketers , BCCI hasn't proved effective in rooting out the evil , that is criminal in nature.

Spot-fixing or Match-fixing , IPL appears to be the platform where black money from India and abroad gets laundered & enhanced through a betting-cum-fixing network that has players acting as conduits & willing accomplices. Its high time that the IPL governing council , a team of 8 with 2 politicians, take a serious stand on the issue and as a first measure initiate a CBI enquiry into the dealings of players, coaches, umpires and owners of franchisees & their opponent teams involved in the  allegations of spot-fixing in IPL and match-fixing in ODIs. This is because even a new student of economics will tell you that the real money floating around televised international cricket matches in India, not excluding the lucrative IPL,  do not lie in franchisee fees or  sponsorships  or players' salaries but in the illegal betting-cum-fixing market that runs into thousands of crores per match. Secondly the sport ministry should seriously consider legalizing match-betting in India if only to drive the criminal & fixing elements out as well as to bring in tax-revenues for channelizing the funds to needy sports bodies that play equally competitive games other than cricket.

As far as the future of IPL 6 is concerned , RR will find it hard to qualify for the final beset as they'll be with more & more of flying allegations of fixings. MI seem to be making a confident stride towards the final and towards the glitering trophy for the first time in the history of IPL only if the tournament doesn't capsize under pressure arising from these new allegations. Its almost as if the final of IPL 6 has already been  played last night at the Wankhade.

Photo Source : IPL official photo archive