News item: IPL Franchisees to hold IPL Commissioner & Chairman Post by rotation
When I first heard this news item on TV, I was taken aback at this new low in our cricket administration. To think that IPL was “owned” by the franchisees is the underlying assumption behind this audacious suggestion from IPL Franchisees “if L K Modi is to be removed” as Commissioner & IPL Chairman. While the argument was that the current BCCI President Shashank Manohar wasn’t competent enough to run IPL, the glibness with which the suggestion was reported on TV showed the buy-in that since the Franchisee’s had invested large sums of money, they “owned” the tournament itself!
But how can you blame them when BCCI has been equally culpable. Instead of being a kind of regulator-promoter of cricket in India, the BCCI has behaved as the private owner of the game. Apart from owning the IPL and killing its rival ICL, the BCCI holds a ‘monopoly’ at the ICC as far as India is concerned! Now that a powerful Union Minister runs BCCI and expected to run the ICC shortly, this conflict of interest, at the cost of the development of the game in India, will continue.
The Government, instead of trying to fix adversaries through IT and other raids, should concentrate on cleaning up the regulation framework and let the market then take its own course. Political vendetta has so far been the only driver of Government intervention. As I said some weeks ago when this current spat between LK Modi and S Tharoor broke, the Congress is simply going to collect the lowdown on BCCI, IPL and specifically Sharad Pawar, LK Modi and the Big shots in BCCI and then use it to get its way in other arenas like parliamentary votes and so on. The ‘files’ will be given a quiet burial in congress safe lockers for future (mis)use.
When everyone knows this, is it surprising that the IPL Franchisees want control of their sleaze?
At the end of the day, L K Modi seems a better bet than any of the others, especially the Government!