Talking point: Just a tremor, no major quake

First up, the Hindi TV channel which conducted the sting operation into Indian cricket deserves a big pat on the back for providing a shake-up to the smug, complacent world of men who run the game in that country. They have surely done it to boost the TRPs, but then what's wrong with that?

The electronic media in India had been no stranger to spycams, but it takes a great amount of guts to stick your neck out and throw accusations of malpractice at the IPL — very much an institution of the rich and famous in India at the moment.

However, if past experiences are anything to go by, then exposing the likes of a T. Sudhindra or Salabh Srivastav is not expected to set anything beyond a mild tremor in the establishment of cricket.

A closer look at the individual cases raked up in the report tells you something — while part of it certainly involves some alleged malpractice in the IPL, what is even scarier is the evidence of greed and fallibility among the domestic cricketers.

The world of Ranji Trophy and Deodhar Trophy are still considered somewhat pure in their appeal, where young men chase their dreams in whites, but the thought of a bowler over-stepping on purpose or a deliberate dropped catch there can be quite unsettling.

Tweet

The current brouhaha is not a patch on what the IPL had survived barely two years back — thanks to Lalit Modi's damning tweet which split the erstwhile happy family of IPL for good. It had all the ammo for a full-blown scam — FERA violations, dodgy ownership of some of the teams and, of course, accusations of match-fixing — so much so that it was taken up in the Parliament as well.

It was "convenient" on that occasion to make Modi the fall guy, but it will be naïve to think that the IPL had become clean at one stroke since then. Some of the excesses of the Modi-raj has reportedly been cut down, but the entire dynamics of IPL leaves enough opportunities for various forms of malpractice.

Short memory

Fortunately for some, public memory is short and, after a little lull last year, the IPL has certainly staged a "comeback" this season. The Indian board has shown the right intent by coming down heavily on the tainted five, though deep down, one feels sorry about these bunch of bread-and-butter cricketers. Out of reckoning for the big league anyway, they will now be ostracised in closer circles of family and friends until they clear their names. Will it help in "cleaning" up the system? The cynic in me is not so sure!