IPL - Looks can be deceptive

The Twitter website asks “what’s happening” and makes the answer spread across the globe to millions, immediately.

The definition in the dictionary for Twitter is "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product is about. It boasts of getting 1 billion users by 2013 while 41% of users still exchange pointless babble.

In India, where rumors spread like wildfire, this tool has caught the eye of many. Twitter has become a battleground of sorts – some smaller wars fought some bigger with far reaching implications.

The country is known for politicians who are downright corrupt and will get into any venture to park their illegal funds.

Business houses have also made this a money spinner of sorts.
Though many pundits and genuine cricket lovers dismiss IPL as a ‘circus in the garb of cricket’, this annual sporting event has become the biggest ‘sportainment’ (Entertainment with Sport) in the country.

When the viewership is so high, money at stake will closely follow. According to a brand valuation company Brand Finance, the IPL-3 is valued at $4.13 billion (Rs 19,000 crore) which is more than double of $2.01 billion in IPL 2009.

Though IPL-3 has been not all about cricket but has taken attention off the field for all the wrong reasons.
The bidding of a new team for IPL-4 -Kochi Team was by a consortium called Rendezvous sports – the people behind this consortium is not known, and that’s the center of all the controversy tweeted by Modi.

It now turns out that Mr Modi’s disclosure not only claimed the ministerial chair held by Mr Tharoor,The famous Tweet Minister but also put Congress on the back-foot, breathing, in the process, fresh life into the Opposition. The government now is under tremendous pressure to ensure that the BCCI and the IPL cleaned up their acts.

Rajiv Shukla, vice president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India said that whatever is needed to be done to keep up the BCCI's reputation will be done. He said, "BCCI has a reputation to keep and it cannot be maligned under any circumstance."

What reputation, a cricket body that is indirectly run by politicians who make the Sport in the Country that is a religion murkier by the day.
Upon his election in 2004, Dalmiya’s contribution in raising ICC’s fortunes gave BCCI a strong hold in all the cricketing matters. BCCI gradually went on to become the richest Cricket Body, thus, it became unfeasible for ICC to ignore it in any matter.

Since then the BCCI has been arm twisting the ICC in matters concerning their interest. Moreover, Indian cricket chief Sharad Pawar will become the International Cricket Council (ICC) president in 2010 after England's David Morgan, making it important for him to ensure his reputation did not get hampered.

While Lalit Modi, Commissioner of the Indian Premier League, remained adamant that he would not step down, the odds of him staying on in the job worsened after Sharad Pawar, former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and food and agriculture minister, gave the go-ahead to the move to remove Modi following a series of meetings during the day with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and home minister P. Chidamabaram. Pawar also met Shashank Manohar, who is currently the president of BCCI, to discuss the issue but declined to divulge details.

Even late C K Prahlad, the Marketing Guru agrees on the murky politics in the country.
He quoted earlier “Given the risky nature of the investments in elections, politicians as venture capitalists, we can assume, will not settle for less than a 10-fold return.”

After three years, the BCCI wakes up to disclose the murky deals and the ownership details to the public. The Indian public has no say in the matter and as usual keeps itself on the side watching the tamasha unfold.

It is the government which has to come clean and ensure that the promises to the public about the Austerity drive and cleaning up of the system takes place once and for all.

The public has little reason to believe whether this will lead to any change in the workings of the BCCI which is nothing but a battle ground for politicians to showcase their power in the big bad world of Indian Cricket.

As they say "Let the Show go on."