Indian cricket is in the throes of its gravest crisis yet. The betting and fixing scandals go far beyond the first wave that came up in the ‘90s to be followed by the Hansie Cronje upheaval that had several repercussions for Indian cricketers.
The current scandal will not go away that easily and it will probably take a greater toll of Indian players even if very few of the rumours sweeping the nation turn out to be true. Compared to the tempests of the past this is a tsunami.
The names popping up from among the player ranks are quite benumbing. Cricket lovers would have been praying that the one big fish in Shanthakumaran Sreesanth is enough and that the scandal won’t claim more big scalps even as the cricketing action comes back to normal soon with the Champions Trophy. If the Delhi police, who have been assiduously on the ‘fixing’ trail over the years, had netted bigger fish from Team India ranks then all hell may have broken loose.
It’s as well that Team India are already in London. This escape from the home atmosphere might help them keep their switch their mind back to the game. Their life in an IPL trance continued right up to the point when Dhoni, who likes a verbal joust or two, was as silent as lambs to the slaughter after being gagged by BCCI from making any pronouncements on the moral crisis in the game in the course of a ‘controlled’ tour departure press conference.
It’s hard to keep faith with a game that ‘fixes’ its press conferences too. All these diktats come out of the left field and are never likely to serve the image of the game in the long run. This, after IPL’s image had taken far bigger hits to its credibility in season-6 than the previous five put together. One sequence of three consecutive catches offered by Michael Hussey and floored by Kieron Pollard at point was sufficient to send the most innocent fan of the game on his journey into the state of cynicism that several decades of life may have thrust upon us.
The way the game went was even more damning. Two fast bowlers with figures of reasonable economy in their three overs did not get to finish their quota while CSK leaked some 39 runs in the last 16 balls. And the captain was the much decorated Dhoni leading the two-time champion team that has the most consistent record in 6 IPLs. Check out what number the skipper came out to bat too in the chase.
In a lifetime of watching cricket you may have tended to forgive many things as errors of judgment made even by the best and most cerebral of cricketers in the heat of the contest. But the kind of patterns seen in too many big games this season led to the belief that the rot is much more deep rooted. To cleanse this would need a Hercules because IPL is quite the Augean stables now. And who is to wield the broom - not those who brought things to such a pass?
And yet, as a cricket lover, you tend to remember the positive images most. The suspicious strategic moments disappear from the mind as soon as one great cricketing stroke is played or one balletic catch is sighted.
When you see the cricketers giving their all in throwing themselves at the ball along the rope is still an inspiring sight. Only when there is a fumble at the end of such athletic fashion sometimes you wonder if there was more to it than just another fielding error.
The more the suspicions grow, the more cricketers will struggle to play their normal game. This will be their burden to bear throughout the rest of their career.
A league that insists on giving the fair play trophy to a team in the centre of the storm and whose owner is in police custody on suspicion of cavalier betting and information sharing must be run by the most cussed men. The team which placed second in the fair play stakes was Rajasthan Royals whose players were guilty of bringing the game into disrepute. What an apt ending to a league of skewed morality!