Gilchrist Hears Whispers and Suggestions

About fixing in IPL. From DH:

"It's been discussed among players in the IPL - more wondering whether it goes on. There's a strong thought that we'd be naive to think it's not happening, because it's a pretty easy target. There's a lot of accessibility to players and it's early in its governance," Gilchrist, who is here to play for county side Middlesex, said.

The retired wicketkeeper-batsman said corruption in cricket can only be stopped by heightened vigilance."I've been made more aware of it since getting here, seeing some of those comments from players who have been approached," Gilchrist told 'The Daily Telegraph'.

Of course, the one of the 'players who have been approached' is a English county cricketer who was approached by an Indian businessman. Link here.

IPL: Fixing Was A Regular Occurrence

Michael Atherton has it off-record from a 'former international player':

... one leading former international player told me categorically, albeit off the record because of his fear of reprisals, that fixing was a regular occurrence.

Article here. Difficult to know how much credence to give an anonymous source, but keeping in mind that the IT department supposedly had a list of 27 players who were gaming the system, it does seem that it is happening.

He also writes:

I have always been deeply ambivalent about the IPL: the gross commercialisation, the greed, the pandering to celebrities and the salesmanship of some older players who should know better have done little to enrich the game.

And:

Modi’s marketing genius — and it was just that — will be missed, further straining revenues. It will begin to feel more like a cricket tournament than a giant commercial advert with cricket attached.

Funny he calls IPL a giant commercial advert with cricket attached. I'd said something similar in a mail to the Hasiru Usiru mailing list:

I believe cricket as it is in our country currently, is nothing but a hanger on which ads for lousy products like the fizzy drinks can be hung. It is also a money-making enterprise for its practitioners and administrators. The money is not always made playing the game as it should be played. I could care less about IPL's fate.

Oh well, the advert will go on, no doubt about it.

IPL Quote Of The Season?

I've steadfastly kept away from either watching or reading about IPL since its inception. Except for the last few days as the skeletons have kept tumbling out of the closets. Even then all I've watched or read has been on the News Channels on TV and in the News sections of newspapers. So I think this definitely is the quote of the season as far as IPL is concerned.

Salman Khurshid according to Business Line:

The Minister for Corporate Affairs, Mr Salman Khurshid, played the IPL controversy with a straight bat. He also ducked with aplomb all bouncers on possible corporate governance failures among the franchises. That he was a classicist in cricket came out in the open when he said last week at an industry event that IPL isn't cricket although it looks little bit like it. “It (IPL) looks like cricket, but it isn't”.

"IPL isn't cricket although it looks a bit like it". Bravo sir.

On IPL

Two opinion pieces on the crapola that is IPL. One, a serious one from P Sainath. An excerpt from it highlighting the media's acquiescence on the whole matter:

It was just 10 years ago that cricket was rocked by the game's biggest-ever match-fixing scandal. That too had its centre of gravity in Indian cities, and involved Indian bookies and Indian businessmen. But along comes a new hyper-commercialised version of the game. It has scandal-waiting-to-happen written all over it and the media say “wow! This looks great,” promptly going into the “willing suspension of disbelief” mode. This venture had the right names, high glamour and, above all, big advertising and corporate power. There were obvious conflicts of interest (apart from what it did to cricket, the game) from day one. Here was Big Business in open embrace with its political patrons. There were also those who did not give the public office they held a fraction of the time or importance they gave to the BCCI-IPL. But few serious questions came up in the media.

The other a tongue-in-cheek one from T. C. A. Srinivasa-Raghavan. The defines the problem as follows, before coming up with a theorem, a corollary and a lemma:

To the extent that cricket is the only sport that Indians seem to enjoy, the demand for it far exceeds supply.

The convenience that TV offers, of being able to watch it in the comfort of your home, has enlarged the supply-demand gap disproportionately because even those who would not otherwise watch cricket watch it now.

Add to this the fact that the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) has the monopoly over cricket, and the perils of short supply become very evident. The flies begin to gather.

Top it all off with the terrifying amount of money floating about in the world looking for sure-fire investments, and what you get is an IPL-like phenomenon, namely, super-normal profits caused by a huge demand-supply gap and a monopoly.

Indeed, the IPL is different from other controlled businesses — like mining, for example — only in that it is entertaining and therefore more visible. But it has its share of sleaze balls in the same proportion as Defence deals, road-building contracts, mining and so on. They also get attracted to what in economics are called ‘supernormal profits'.