#dnaEdit: Cleaning up the game

When the Indian Premier League (IPL) began in 2008, the biggest worry of those who believed in the purest version of the game — the Test match — was that the abridged version would pollute skills of the practitioners of the art of cricket. Seven years down the line and after the Justice Lodha panel’s conclusions on Tuesday, this fear seems unfounded. Twenty-twenty has only added to a cricketer’s repertoire. The league, however, has tarnished the image of the sport. 

In a landmark verdict delivered on Tuesday, the Justice Lodha panel suspended Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals for two years. It also imposed life bans on CSK and RR key officials Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra, respectively. While this is a big clean-up act, it remains to be seen how much muck sticks to the game, especially in the minds of cricket fans. 

It is hard to say if calling cricket a gentleman’s game has classist undertones. However, the adage does succeed in giving the sport an aura that reflects hues of sportsmanship, camaraderie and fair play. And cricket sustained this quality despite many hiccups till the IPL started gnawing at it. Picture players in white flannels, umpires unflappable in crisp white coats, white fence unblemished by the gaudy splash of advertising boards, throw in the red cherry and you get the essence of traditional cricket. The sport that was largely untouched by the lure of dollars. A British sport that Indians made their own.

India has produced legends such as CK Nayudu, Lala Amarnath, Vijay Hazare, the legendary spin quartet of Bedi, Prasanna, Venkatraghavan and Chandrasekhar and the maestro Sunil Gavaskar. Most of them hardly made any money playing cricket. Yet, they gave a major chunk of their lives to the game And many still continue to do so. These legends personified cricket as a gentleman’s game. 

How many of us can talk about contemporary cricket with so much reverence? 

Can anyone forget that BS Chandrashekhar struggled to fund his treatment after an accident left him partially paralysed? Do any of the cricket officials and players spare a thought for what the legendary leg-spinner might be going through when he reads the headlines cricket is making? The biggest disservice the current IPL spot-fixing and the match-fixing scandal of the late last century have done to the sport is that there is now a generation of teenagers and those in their early 20s to whom cricket and corruption are not unrelated terms.

It would be naïve to think that young fans will be forgiving just because the IPL, like the proverbial show, will go on. They may still throng the stadiums but they are going to question every dropped catch, every improbable twist in the tale, every doubtable decision. One cannot sow seeds of doubt and reap faith, even more so in a sport people call a religion.

Try explaining to a young fan, who, has seen his heroes fall and his favourite teams disgraced, that cricket is a gentleman’s game. Tell him about the spirit of the sport. Tell him that cricket and money don’t necessarily go hand in hand. It would take a lot of convincing. 

Even as purists criticised, the IPL did bring in more viewership, especially those who otherwise would not watch the sport. Having brought in these sections into cricket fold, the board should have ensured that the league stayed clean and took the sport forward. 

By ignoring the early warning bells, the board, with an eye on golden eggs, kept pampering the goose and its handlers. One cannot help but feel that the IPL, on a prime-time slot usually reserved for daily soaps, will continue to be successful. 

The tournament may have set out to revolutionise prime-time TV-watching habits. But, it has, in turn, been coerced into adapting to the demands of the slot. It is nothing short of a soap opera now and has very little to do with the gentleman’s game.