Despite all the mud-slinging and accusations against IPL boss Lalit Modi, nothing is likely to come of them as he has as many powerful friends as he has enemies
Raghavan Jagannathan
It all began with a tweet. On April 11 Lalit Kumar Modi, tsar of India’s money-spinning T20 cricket format, the Indian Premier League (IPL), disclosed the secret ownership of one of his newest franchisees (Kochi, in the southern state of Kerala) on Twitter.
He hinted that big powers were batting for it. “I was told by him [Shashi Tharoor, India’s junior minister for external affairs] not to get into who owns Rendezvous. Specially Sunanda Pushkar. Why? The aforementioned has been minuted in my records.”
For the uninitiated, a little background is in order. The IPL has eight franchisee teams (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Punjab and Rajasthan). This year the plan was to add two more and the internal buzz was that Ahmedabad and Pune, in the western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, would win.
But the IPL’s owner, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), was unhappy with the first round of bidding and called for rebids. This time two unexpected groups won: Sahara, sponsor of the Indian cricket team, got Pune, and Rendezvous Sports World (RSW) got Kochi in the southern state of Kerala.
Tharoor, a former United Nations under secretary general who was elected to Parliament from Kerala, played godfather to the Kochi bid, possibly upsetting the IPL’s carefully crafted plans to induct its own favoured bidders. Sunanda Pushkar, his woman friend, was given just less than 5% of zero-cost equity in the Kochi franchise.
Modi’s detractors say he breached the confidentiality clause in franchisee agreements when he publicly disclosed Kochi’s shareholding structure and tweeted about pressure from Tharoor to keep Sunanda’s name out of it.
Once the tweet hit the headlines, all hell broke loose. Tharoor was widely seen to have committed an impropriety and embarrassed the Congress party, especially since he was considered to be close to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Gandhi family (Sonia and her son Rahul) which rules the Congress party.
Even as speculation about the Tharoor-Sunanda relationship spiced up the story, the Congress party came under heavy opposition attack in Parliament. The party’s managers, worried about the passage of the annual budget when the opposition was in a belligerent mood, decided to make a tactical retreat and asked Tharoor to resign.
But it also decided to cover up this humiliation by launching an all-out, multi-agency probe into IPL, its finances, its franchisees, its alleged links to betting syndicates, et al. Suddenly, India’s biggest sporting brand — the IPL is valued at more than $4-billion — was under attack from every side. Allegations of funny money, unknown owners and betting scandals surfaced all at once. Even as the government was sharpening its knives by raiding the offices of Modi and the franchisees, Modi’s enemies in the BCCI decided to strike on their own.
Flamboyant character
A flamboyant character known for his marketing chutzpah, high-profile political and celebrity affiliations, and headstrong style of functioning, Modi had scores of enemies both within the BCCI and outside.
Protected by Sharad Pawar, India’s agriculture minister and the next president of the International Cricket Council (ICC), Modi felt he was safe and need not bother with the rest of the BCCI’s power elite.
He also angered the government last year when he decided to move the IPL to South Africa when the home ministry declined to guarantee security for his matches amid a general election.
The Tharoor crisis gave Modi’s rivals the opportunity to band together and get even with him. The minute the third season of the IPL ended on April 25, the BCCI, in a midnight order, suspended him from the commissionership of IPL and replaced him with Chirayu Amin, a less controversial businessman.
Among the things the BCCI has charged him with are rigging the bids in the last round of IPL expansion, arm-twisting the Kochi franchisee to withdraw after it won the bid, non-disclosure of his indirect interests in some of the IPL teams (Rajasthan Royals, for example, where his brother-in-law owns a 44% stake), keeping the BCCI in the dark on an unexplained $80-million “facilitation fee” paid for broadcasting rights and general misconduct and indiscipline.
What he has not been accused of — at least formally — is rigging matches and being in league with the betting syndicates, though this has been mentioned in hushed tones. The closest anyone came to accusing him of rigging matches is a maverick, retired income-tax commissioner called Vishwa Bandhu Gupta, who claimed — without proof — that all IPL-3 matches in 2010 were rigged.
Hints of rigging were also heard when IPL matches were hosted by South Africa in 2009, but this is entirely unsubstantiated. The multi-agency probe launched by the government of India may come up with something, but as yet there’s nothing to nail Modi with.
Powerful friends
So what will happen to Modi? Will he be arrested for his alleged wrongdoings? What will happen to the IPL? Will it be wound down?
In the immediate future, Modi can do one of two things: He can challenge his suspension as IPL chief and get it stayed by the courts or buy peace with the BCCI through some compromise deal.
Nobody can predict the course of the official investigations, but one thing is certain: nothing will finally come of it. Reason: Modi has as many powerful friends as enemies.
India’s biggest businessman, Mukesh Ambani, who owns the Mumbai IPL franchise, is a silent backer. So is liquor baron Vijay Mallya. Mumbai filmdom’s biggest star, Shah Rukh Khan, is unlikely to give up on him. Both Ambani and Khan have close ties to the Congress and the Gandhi family.
Sharad Pawar, an important political ally of the Congress in the UPA coalition in Delhi and in the state of Maharashtra, is a cricket powerhouse and Modi supporter. This means Modi is not going to be abandoned anytime soon. At best, he will be cut down to size, and once the brouhaha dies down, he could return to the BCCI power structure.
His baby, the IPL, is now too big and too successful for anyone to want to destroy it. Cricket has always had political godfathers in India, as it involves big money and offers big exposure to all those associated with it. Modi’s genius was that he repositioned cricket (especially the Twenty20 version of it) from mere sport to entertainment.
By involving businessmen and film stars in it, he made cricket an alternative form of entertainment that went beyond sport. It is an alternative even to the three-hour Indian film, the traditional Indian form of weekly entertainment.
Modi’s creation will live on and prosper. Modi himself may be down, but he is not out.
Raghavan Jagannathan is executive editor of Daily News & Analysis, Mumbai’s second-largest daily.