Dubai: Which is greater: Indians’ thirst for cricket, or Indians’ thirst?
Yesterday, the Bombay High Court came down on the side of H2O, stumping officials from the Indian Premier League. The court ruled that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will have to move 13 scheduled IPL fixtures out of the state of Maharashtra after April 30.
A farmer ponders his plight in a parched paddy field in a village near Latur in drought-hit Maharashtra.
The court’s reasoning? A drought in the state means the cricket games will place a strain on scarce water resources, and it’s just not sporting to let the fixtures in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur go on.
There are 28,000 villages hit by the water shortage in the state.
“There is no doubt that the state of Maharashtra and many districts in Marathwada region are facing a severe drought,” the court ruled. And it threw cold water on Maharashtra officials, saying they had “turned a blind eye on the issue and misled the court by saying it hadn’t supplied any water to the stadiums.”
13 games
It takes 60,000 litres of water daily to maintain a pitch – just a drop in the ocean when it comes to Indian’s overall water usage. By moving the 13 games, it’s estimated 6 million litres of water will be saved – enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool twice over. Would that amount make any difference in the drought anyway?
The verdict has BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur boiling mad. “Cricket is so popular in our country that people want to create controversy over it,” he said. “How many swimming pools in 5-star hotels are being shut because of the drought? We are not using potable water and we are ready to help farmers too.”
The IPL has invested Dh16.6 million in staging the games in Maharashtra.
The IPL franchises and the BCCI had promised to donate to drought relief measures, but that argument didn’t hold water as far as the court was concerned. “We cannot lose sight of the plight of millions of poor people,” the court noted.
After yesterday’s ruling, the BCCI said it would wait for the verdict in writing to see if it is indeed legally watertight.
