entertainment

S Sreesanth

BCCI

proof

football

the National

USA Basketball

work out

the league

the game

Time to look at IPL as WWE-styleand not REAL sport.A few years ago, a clever copy-editor coined the term 'cricketainment' to describe the Indian Premier League. The new word was instantly gobbled up by cricket lovers and journalists alike.But yesterday, when three IPL cricketers, including double World Cup winner, were arrested by the Delhi police on charges of spotfixing, 'cricketainment' morphed from merely a clever term into an uncomfortably accurate observation - that the IPL is to cricket what the WWE is to real wrestling.This idea was expressed succinctly in the following tweet: “Why do you follow IPL? Same reason I watch reality TV. If you take it with a pinch of salt & realise that it’s heavily edited, it’s fun!" So has the time come to seperate IPL and? It may seem like an impossible task, given the huge conflicts of interest among administrators and players, but this seems to be the only way to save both.While the process would be far from straightforward, there is amplethat decoupling the two entities could work. England’s premiumcompetition, the English Premier League, is a corporation in which the 20 member clubs act as shareholders.English national football on the other hand is run by an body called the Football Association. In the US,Basketball Association, which runs the world's best basketball league, is separate from, in charge of the national team.Perhaps the time has come for the BCCI toan arrangement by the nine IPL teams runon their own.What issues will this resolve? For starters, it will force the teams to accept responsibility for the conduct of the league and the behaviour their players on and off the field. As if now, players are on their own as far as their conduct off the field is concerned. Every time something like this happens, the BCCI pulls out the same tired set of excuses, like the one its president N Srinivasan used yesterday when he called the three arrested cricketers “a few bad eggs”.How can the BCCI, which is neck-deep in owning and running the league, by expected to punish itself?Meanwhile, neither BCCI nor IPL can claim that they did not know this was coming; they had been warned about it in explicit terms. A 2012 report on anti-corruption measures, commissioned by the International Cricket Council (ICC), clearly stated that the IPL was ripe for potential bookies and match-fixing.The report, a review of the ICC’s anti-corruption setup, was filed by a certain Bertrand de Speville, a former solicitor general of Hong Kong, known for his impeccable track record. Speville had filed the report couple of years ago after consulting varied stakeholders in world cricket.“The view of those consulted is that the arrival of international T20 cricket and the Indian Premier League has considerably increased the risk of match-fixing and spot-fixing,” he wrote then. The 33-page report names only the IPL, even though there are twenty20 leagues in virtually every cricket-playing country.It went on to say: “Almost inevitably greater wealth inwill tempt some to quick riches through corruption and dishonesty. Given the considerable size of the betting industry, those involved in match-fixing and spot-fixing will continue to tempt players and their support personnel, ground staff and match officials. The challenge for the cricket authorities is to minimise the opportunities for corruption.”The report was submitted to ICC’s all-powerful executive board, but none of its recommendations were adopted.