{"id":245142,"date":"2015-06-27T22:24:01","date_gmt":"2015-06-27T16:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/?p=245142"},"modified":"2015-06-27T22:24:01","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T16:54:01","slug":"the-dark-underbelly-of-indian-cricket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/the-dark-underbelly-of-indian-cricket\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Underbelly of Indian Cricket"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lalit-modi\"
Under the scanner<\/strong> Lalit Modi is once again in the media glare after the recent controversy<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nGone are the days when one batted with a straight bat. With the tumultuous popularity of T20 and Indian Premier League (IPL), it is all about unending slogs. No one is more adept than Lalit Kumar Modi at attempting hefty heaves against any bowler. He can reverse sweep Sushma Swaraj, play an upper cut against Vasundhara Raje, hit N Srinivasan over his head, step down to P Chidambaram, and slam Rupert Murdoch, Rajiv Shukla, Shashi Tharoor, Rakesh Maria and BCCI officials at will.
\nThanks to former Mr Cricket, who takes credit for inventing IPL, ministers, former ministers, chief ministers, former chief ministers, police commissioners, lawyers, global politicians, foreign bureaucrats and officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) find themselves in the dock. No one, be it friend or enemy, is safe when LaMo (his new nickname) opens his mouth and taps his mobiles to send tweets. Not even Narendra Modi, the country\u2019s prime minister.
\nBritian\u2019s longest serving Indian-origin politician Keith Vaz battled to save himself, and somehow retained the powerful post of the chairman of Home Affairs Select Committee. Indian opposition parties have bayed for the blood of Swaraj, the external affairs minister, and Raje, Rajasthan\u2019s chief minister. Maria, Mumbai\u2019s former police commissioner, is under investigation. Arun Jaitley, the finance minister, finds himself on the backfoot.
\nThe list of those who were seared by LaMo\u2019s attacks in the past few weeks is a long one. It includes the British royalty, Mukesh Ambani, India\u2019s richest man, Tharoor, the former junior external affairs minister, P Chidambaram, the former finance minister, Rajiv Shukla, a Congress politician who had a long stint in BCCI, Murdoch, the biggest media magnate in the world and, of course, Srinivasan, the discredited former head of BCCI and currently the chief of the International Cricket Council (ICC).
\nIf one looks at those who were retired hurt in the past, there is Sharad Pawar, head of Nationalist Congress Party, his daughter, Supriya Sule, and party colleague, Praful Patel. Other Indian politicians who found themselves in LaMo\u2019s net were Prem Kumar Dhumal, former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, and his son, Anurag Thakur, who is secretary, BCCI. Then there were his business and celebrity friends like Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta and the Burman family, who own IPL teams.
\nTo understand how and why Lalit Modi can undermine such powerful people, and so many of them, one has to analyse the wheels within the Indian cricket. The dismal truth is that the gentleman\u2019s game is besieged by negative influences due to money, politics, global mafia, corruption, and a rotten cricket administration. To figure out Modi\u2019s expansive sway, one has to start at the beginning of the current controversy, also the beginning of Modi\u2019s cricket career.
\nMurdoch vs Vaz<\/strong>
\nFor two decades, the British media was accused of hacking phones and emails, not just of celebrities, politicians and royal family members, but also of the parents of the victims of heinous crimes. The worst of these scandals came to light in 2009, which involved News of the World<\/em>, which was owned by Murdoch and subsequently closed down. One of the worst critics of the media baron was none other than Vaz, head of the Home Affairs Committee, which investigated the issue.
\n
\"Sting
Sting target<\/strong> Keith Vaz\u2019s email was leaked<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nIn July 2011, Vaz said, \u201cThere has been a catalogue of failures by the Metropolitan Police, and deliberate attempts by News International (owned by Murdoch) to thwart the various investigations.\u201d In its report in the same month, the Committee concluded, \u201cWe deplore the response of News International to the original investigations into hacking. It is almost impossible to escape the conclusion\u2026 that they were deliberately trying to thwart a criminal investigation. We are astounded at the length of time it has taken for News International to cooperate with the police\u2026\u201d
\nTherefore, Vaz and Murdoch have a history. Not surprisingly, it was a sting by Murdoch-owned The Times<\/em>, London, against Vaz that opened LaMo\u2019s can of worms. When it went through the politician\u2019s emails, it found a string of them related to LaMo and Swaraj. On 31 July 2014, Vaz wrote to Sarah Rapson, an official at the UK home office, and urged her to expedite Modi\u2019s documents to enable the latter to travel from London to Portugal for his wife\u2019s cancer treatment.
\nIt read: \u201cForeign minister of India has spoken to me making it very clear that the Indian Government has no objection to the travel documents being granted which is contrary to what the (earlier) refusal notice (of the home office) has stated.\u201d During UPA-2 regime, India had told the UK that there were serious cases against Modi, that his passport was cancelled, and that there was a blue-corner notice against him, which prohibited his travel outside the UK. If he was allowed to leave the country, India had warned that it would impact bilateral ties between the two nations. This was the reason for the earlier \u201crefusal notice\u201d by the UK.
\nA day after Vaz\u2019s email, Rapson replied, \u201cI understand from my colleagues in Travel Documents that this issue has been resolved and that the solicitors have been contacted with the good news and indeed the document.\u201d The same day LaMo sent a \u2018thank you\u2019 email to several recipients, including Vaz and Swaraj Kaushal, Sushma Swaraj\u2019s husband. It read: \u201cThank you for putting all your might and help and sleepless nights in resolving this major issue which has taken us thru [sic]\u00a0tremendous roller coaster ride\u2026 The sigh of relief I got even for a minute as I held the document before relinquishing to my portugese [sic]\u00a0friends was a sheer delight. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.\u201d
\n
\n
\"Family
Family affair<\/strong> Sushma Swaraj\u2019s husband and daughter are involved in the Lalit Modi controversy<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nL\u2019 affaire Swaraj<\/strong>
\nSwaraj found herself in a corner. How could the external affairs minister help an absconder, a person who had run away to escape punishment for his crimes? After all, the Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate (ED) were involved in the investigations of several cases against him. The two agencies had asked LaMo to appear before them, but the latter had refused to do so. The BCCI had found him guilty and stripped him off all the posts, including the head of IPL.
\nThe external affairs minister said she had done so on \u201chumanitarian grounds\u201d because Minal, LaMo\u2019s wife, had cancer. The BJP and RSS batted for her. LaMo waved an alleged letter from Interpol that there was no blue corner notice against him. He added that a high court order had allowed him to use his passport. Hence, he was free to travel anywhere.
\nInterestingly, LaMo had in 2014 tweeted a picture of himself and \u2018brother\u2019 Ron Noble, secretary general (now retired) of Interpol, the UN-mandated agency meant to battle transnational crime. Contacted by media recently, he said at no time had India requested a blue notice against LaMo.
\nOther scandals then fell out of Swaraj\u2019s cupboard. Her husband admitted he was LaMo\u2019s lawyer for two decades. Her daughter Bansuri was among the lawyers who helped LaMo get back his passport through a court order. Another lawyer was Ankur Chawla, son of journalist Prabhu Chawla. After the order, LaMo had sent them a \u2018thank you\u2019 email.
\nIn August 2013, when Swaraj was the head of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, she asked LaMo if he could help her nephew Jyotirmay get admission in the UK. Within days, LaMo wrote to Vaz, \u201cMrs Sushma Swaraj called to see if we can do anything to help her nephew get into the law program at Sussex. Can you help with this. Much love. Lalit.\u201d
\nKirti Azad, the former cricketer and BJP\u2019s Member of Parliament, alleged that Jaitley was behind the leak of Vaz\u2019s emails. At least, he was the one who alerted an Indian news channel to rake up The Times<\/em> sting. He said that LaMo alone cannot be blamed for the ed cases against him; all members of the IPL Governing Council and BCCI Executive Committee should be investigated. If the ed expands the scope of its inquiry, Jaitley, Pawar, Shukla and Srinivasan could be in trouble.
\nRaje in the picture<\/strong>
\nIn his bid to prove that Swaraj had acted on humanitarian grounds, LaMo dragged the Rajasthan chief minister into the ongoing controversy. He claimed that Raje had accompanied his wife to Portugal twice, in 2012 and 2013, for treatment. This was the period when LaMo couldn\u2019t travel since the UK had refused his travel documents. He added that he knew Raje for 30 years, and \u201cshe is a close friend of the family and my wife for a long time\u201d. Here was another twist to the tale.
\nAccording to Modi, while he was fighting the travel case in the UK, Raje agreed to be one of the witnesses for him. However, \u201cUnfortunately by the time the case went to trial, she was already chief minister, so she did not come to become a witness. The statements she gave is all on record in the courts.\u201d While she supported LaMo\u2019s bid to travel to Portugal, her document included a confidentiality clause that her name shouldn\u2019t be revealed to Indian authorities.
\nIt is true that LaMo\u2019s rise in cricket administration was masterminded by Raje. In 2003, the latter became the state\u2019s chief minister for the first time. The next year, she promulgated the Rajasthan Sports (Registration, Recognition & Regulation of Associations) ordinance. Its purpose, say sources, was to help Modi to become the head of the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA). In those days, LaMo was a member of RCA, which was a stronghold of the Rungta family. The family, with 57 members supporting it, who were either family members or loyalists, enjoyed a majority in the association.
\nOne of the clauses of the ordinance was that all sports associations would be disbanded and registered afresh. Another stated that individual members of the associations would not be allowed to vote for the various posts of the respective institutions. Only the office bearers of district-level sports associations and primary sports bodies could contest such elections. The ordinance shook the ground beneath the feet of the Rungtas. Since the 57 individuals who owed allegiance to the family couldn\u2019t vote, it wasn\u2019t sure of the victory in the subsequent RCA elections.
\nAfter the Rajasthan High Court dismissed the Rungtas\u2019 petition that challenged the ordinance in December 2004, it paved the way for Modi to become the head of RCA in 2005. He ruled like a cricket czar. In fact, it was alleged that he became Raje\u2019s extra constitutional authority, and oversaw sensitive and crucial government files. He had a finger in every official pie, be it real estate, mining or liquor. He amassed vast wealth, and purchased havelis<\/em> (mansions) for his wife. LaMo denied these charges; he said he was hardly in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, to look at government files or interfere in state policies.
\nRise and rise of LaMo<\/strong>
\nLalit Modi\u2019s entry into RCA marked his rise to greater heights in the BCCI. In 2004, Pawar ran for the BCCI president\u2019s post. He lost by one vote to Ranbir Singh Mahendra, who was handpicked by Jagmohan Dalmiya, the incumbent BCCI chief, who then ruled cricket like his fiefdom. What angered Pawar was that he lost because of a second vote by Dalmiya, who insisted that he was allowed to cast it as the outgoing president. The next year Pawar took on Mahendra again. This time he was unwilling to accept defeat. As the RCA head, LaMo rooted for Pawar, who won easily in the 2005 BCCIelections.
\nThe reward that LaMo got was a key responsibility; he was asked to monitor BCCI\u2019s commercial contracts. According to his personal website, \u201cUnder Lalit\u2019s stewardship, Indian cricket enjoyed a commercial revolution. Through a series of innovative partnerships with leading brands and broadcasters including Nike, Sahara, Sony, ESPN and Viacom, Indian cricket\u2019s revenues increased seven fold between 2005 and 2008. In 2008, BCCI enjoyed record annual revenues of $1 billion.\u201d
\nIt was during Pawar\u2019s reign in BCCI that LaMo realised an ambition that he had nurtured for nearly two decades. He had pushed the BCCI\u00a0 several times to start a league that would feature teams, owned by business groups, and showcase international cricketers. However, he was shunned, especially by Dalmiya, who said \u2018no\u2019 to the participation of foreign players. LaMo got his opportunity when Zee Group\u2019s owner, Subhash Chandra, launched a renegade league. In 2007, with Pawar at the helm, the BCCI urged LaMo to start the IPL before Chandra stole the thunder and lightning.
\nBetween 2008 and 2010, Modi could do no wrong. IPL was valued at over $4 billion as viewership boomed. No one had the gall or guts to point a finger at him who was backed by Pawar. He was the politician\u2019s blue-eyed boy, who had discovered a huge vein of gold through the T20 league. Unfortunately, jealousies brewed within the board. Several officials, like Srinivasan, who was first treasurer and then secretary, and Shukla, who headed the marketing committee, waited for their chances.
\nBrushes with Chidambaram<\/strong>
\nThe genesis of LaMo\u2019s disgraceful decline can be traced to late 2008 and early 2009, when he clashed with Chidambaram, who was then home minister. The second season of IPL in 2009 was scheduled in the months of April and May. The national elections were to be held in the same period; therefore, Chidambaram said he could not provide security for the league. A peeved Lali Modi had to hastily shift it to South Africa. He never forgot the slight; neither did the home minister.
\n
\"Looming
Looming large<\/strong> N Srinivasan, ICC head<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nWhen LaMo shifted IPL-2 to South Africa, the BCCI transferred huge funds to that country to finance the costs and pay Cricket South Africa for the various services. One of the main cases against him is that the RBI\u2019s permission was not sought, as required by law, and the transactions became illegal. LaMo blames Srinivasan who, he says, took the decision to bypass the RBI . He maintains that he had no financial authority, which was appropriated by Srinivasan.
\nAfter the BCCI sacked LaMo in 2010, the night of the finals of IPL-3, the latter flew to London. He had a valid passport at that time. It was Chidambaram who cancelled his passport in 2011, which LaMo claims was illegal. The Modi-Chidambaram spat continued when, in 2013, Chidambaram, the then finance minister under whom ed functioned, met his UK counterpart, George Osborne, then chancellor of the exchequer. A spokesperson of the UK treasury office said that the \u201cIndian finance minister raised the question of Mr. Lalit Modi\u2019s resident status with Mr Osborne.\u201d
\nChidambaram has raised several questions against NDA-2. He contended that the government should have appealed against the high court order in the passport case. He said that Swaraj should have asked Lalit Modi to apply for travel documents to the Indian High Commission in London, and not the UK authorities. Once LaMo\u2019s passport was cancelled and until the high court order, how did the UK allow him to reside in the country? Finally, did NDA-2 take any measures to seek help from the UK in a bid to get LaMo back to India and serve summons to him?
\n
\"Short
Short innings<\/strong> Shashi Tharoor\u2019s IPL involvement came to an end after allegations of bribes being paid to him surfaced. Photo: AFP<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nDecline and fall<\/strong>
\nThe epicentre of the cricket quake that shook LaMo was his intense battle with Tharoor. In 2010, the BCCI decided to add two new IPL franchises. Tharoor, who supported a consortium of investors, who wished to bid for Kochi franchise, charged that LaMo had deliberately rigged the bids to favour a Gujarati business group. At that time, Narendra Modi, the current prime minister, was the president of Gujarat Cricket Association and the state\u2019s chief minister. Amit Shah, now the BJP president, was GCA\u2019s vice president. So, the insinuation was that LaMo wished to please the gca duo.
\nBCCI officials re-tendered the selection of the two franchises. The Kochi consortium won, but Tharoor claimed that LaMo threatened the Kochi investors. The latter met Pawar, his daughter, Sule and Praful Patel to sort out the issue. Finally, LaMo acquiesced, but sought revenge. In a tweet, he revealed that the Kochi owners had a \u2018mysterious\u2019 investor, the late Sunanda Pushkar, who was given a sizeable sweat equity for free and for perpetuity. The hidden allegation: it was a form of a bribe to Tharoor since Pushkar was then his girlfriend. (Tharoor and Pushkar later married)
\nThere was a furore in Parliament; Tharoor had to resign. So, he sought his pound of flesh. He leaked corruption charges against LaMo to the media; a few jealous BCCI officials helped. Finally, LaMo was sacked in May 2010. Within weeks, faced with a slew of charges, including money laundering, he flew to London. LaMo says that he was ousted because of Srinivasan, who became his arch enemy, and Tharoor.
\nMafia threats<\/strong>
\nOne of the reasons that LaMo gave to explain his stay in the UK was that there was a threat to his life in India; he had told the investigating agencies that his lawyers can represent him in the cases against him. Way back in 2009, the Maharashtra State Intelligence Department (SID) revealed that a Pakistan-based terrorist organisation had paid a huge sum to the Dawood Ibrahim-Chhota Shakeel underworld gang to kill Modi. The reason: as per intercepted conversations, the organisation was angry that the IPL chief had refused to allow Pakistan players to take part in IPL that year. Security was given to Modi and his family.
\nIn 2010, the SID withdrew the security when it found that there was no fresh threat. Modi claimed that this was done because he exposed Tharoor in an IPL scam. In October 2010, LaMo hired security agencies in the UK and, today, he gets private security from an Israeli agency.
\nThe final twist came when, in 2013, Srinivasan\u2019s son-in-law, Gurunath Meiyappan, was caught in a match-fixing scandal. The Supreme Court indicted Meiyappan for illegal betting; it also ended Srinivasan\u2019s tenure in BCCI. Alluding to a conflict of interest, the apex court asked the then BCCI president to give up the ownership of an IPL team, Chennai Super Kings, if he wished to stand for BCCI president\u2019s post. He decided to leave BCCI since he was already appointed as the head of ICC.
\nWith both LaMo and Srinivasan out of the BCCI, observers felt that Modigate was over. It was their ego clashes that led to the sequence of sordid events since 2010. They didn\u2019t realise that it was only the Part 1 of the blockbuster. The sequel was about to begin. The second half started with Sushmagate and then the movie became a racy thriller. One still doesn\u2019t know whether there is a third in the series, or whether LaMo, the director-producer- actor, will finally call it quits.
\nPost script In the sequel, several other big names were exposed for their links to LaMo. To sort out the passport issue, he met members of the British royal family and Ambani. Before the sequel, as mentioned earlier, he took on Anurag Thakur, secretary, BCCI, in a tweet. In 1999, LaMo became a member of the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association, but was thrown out in 2000 because of problems with then chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, Thakur\u2019s father.
\neditor@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, the gentleman\u2019s game has claws in commerce, corruption, crime, law, politics, police, royalty, governance, revenge and diplomacy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":245147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2519,56],"tags":[2879,2516,9241,1470,9356,9357,9358,9242,1573,9359,1892,2053,892,9360,3218,9361],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}