Graveyard shift for IPL

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

Among the last street signs visitors to Sharjah Cricket Stadium see before they pass through the main gate to an arena that creaks with faded glory is a stark pointer that reads: “Graveyard”.

Sharjah is where the seventh edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) starts today with a game between the Mumbai Indians and the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Organisers will hope the match is not another step in a funeral procession for a tournament that once seemed destined to breathe life into a game seriously injured by too many one-day internationals and not enough countries playing test cricket. Now, the IPL is on life support.

For the second time the tournament has had to be moved out of India due to the government’s inability to guarantee security because of a schedule clash with general elections.

That has discouraged sponsors who want better bang for their buck than can be delivered by the brazenly made-for-television spectacle that is an exported IPL.

But while sponsors can and have been persuaded to put their money where their customers are not, it is far more difficult to sell or buy is the air freshener - high quality cricket - that organisers desperately need to mask the stink of corruption that envelops the IPL.

Today, even as the fireworks arch across the sky and the cheerleaders strutt their tightly-wrapped stuff to a backdrop of the exploits of players of the stature of Lasith Malinga and Jacques Kallis, India’s Supreme Court will apply its mind to match-fixing.

Specifically, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will ask the court to grant them access to audio recordings from which statements were drawn up in a judicial investigation into spot-fixing and illegal betting in the IPL.

The recordings in question feature BCCI president Narayanaswami Srinivasan and MS Dhoni, captain of India and the Chennai Super Kings (CSK).

Both are giants of the game and both have been implicated in the scandal - Srinivasan by the fact that a figure central to the mess, Gurunath Meiyappan, is his son-in-law and was a high profile CSK official, and Dhoni because he played down Meiyappan’s role with CSK in his testimony to the judicial investigation. The allegation that Dhoni lied to the probe is out there.

Another IPL image problem is that Srinivasan owns the company that owns CSK, and still another that he has been forced to step aside as BCCI president pending the outcome of a new investigation by the Supreme Court.

All of which promises to become as ugly as ugly can get - a truth that few in cricket who are quotable will put their names to for fear of losing or not being considered for an IPL playing, coaching or commentating deal.

So the International Cricket Council (ICC) can hardly be blamed for finding happier news to thrust front and centre yesterday, when Cricket SA were presented with the test mace and a cheque for the equivalent of R4 997 000 as a reward for SA topping the rankings on April 1.

“Test cricket is the pinnacle of our sport and by promoting it as much as we can we will help to ensure its continuing good health as one of our three forms of the game at international level,” an ICC statement quoted chief executive David Richardson as saying.

Once, cricket looked to the IPL to save it from death by dullness. Now, it is trying to stay out of the grave the IPL has dug for itself.