How IPL should have changed Indian cricket (and what really happened)

In 2015, the IPL was at the centre of numerous litigations, and more importantly, of judicial intervention by no less an authority than the Supreme Court of India. The powers that be of the BCCI have been admonished and even warned by the court which has appointed two committees to look into the affairs of the IPL and the cricket board itself - the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee in 2013 and then the first report by the Justice RM Lodha Committee in 2015.

Little, however, has changed in the several years that the IPL has held centre stage. In many ways, it is still a nascent league - after all, eight years in the life of a professional sport entity isn't a lot.

What has changed for the BCCI and therefore the IPL in recent years is that cricket in India has lost its aura of invincibility - and credibility to a large extent - despite its commercial might and overall popularity with the majority of India's populace.

Cricket is the only sport in the world where the nucleus lies in India, and with the clout of a billion people supporting every ball bowled, boundary hit, or catch made, the power of Indian cricket is inarguable.

The IPL was meant to showcase the BCCI's dominance and project India as the centre of the world in cricket philosophy. By now, the IPL should have had and exploited the massive first-mover advantage.

It should have consolidated and optimised the revenue verticals that a tournament of this magnitude enjoys. The BCCI should have extended the reach of the IPL by adopting a top-down model where year-round visibility and the development of infrastructure, talent and commercial activity in T20 cricket should have been the norm.

It should have striven to ensure that the IPL was insulated from questionable practises/ownership of teams; and that its participants were properly oriented and educated on basic aspects of ethics, integrity and business dealings.

Above all, the BCCI should have ensured that the IPL was operated as a professionally run organisation with an accountable profit-making directive, independent in every way from the overarching interference of itself and its officials.

So much has gone wrong with the IPL over time that it is easy to forget how important a role it has played in Indian sports, and how beneficial it actually could have been for Indian society as a whole. Much has, of course, gone wrong due to the flawed priorities of the individuals who oversee the entire league.

But more than anything else, there has been a consistently inconsistent manner of governance that is so clearly insufficient that most of what the IPL could have achieved has been lost due to gross negligence and misconduct.

To blame this governance fallout on one person or regime is pointless and incorrect because none of the BCCI regimes have yet done much to rectify what so clearly has gone wrong.

There isn't any single reason that has led to the erosion of reputation and goodwill that the league could have commanded, but there are many reasons that have led to this situation.

In a nutshell, what the BCCI did was somehow ignore best practises owing to a false sense of comfort that it was exempt from any rules and regulations that govern all other entities in India. It did or let others do things that shouldn't have been allowed or done, simply because, as the all-powerful governing body for cricket, it could.

In doing so, it forgot about all semblances of accountability, transparency, integrity and good business sense, sacrificing viability for show-stopping entertainment. The IPL has tolerated sleaze, veiled and opaque ownership and investment, questionable authenticity of the matches itself, and rampant conflict of interest, all to remain entertaining and topical. Each regime, and each successive BCCI official at least until recently, has fallen prey to the glitz of the IPL.

If one has to pinpoint the factors that have led to this fall from grace for the IPL and its creators, two incidents come to mind. These were the two incidents which made pariahs of two of the league's most vocal supporters within the BCCI.

The Kochi franchise controversy of 2011 and the spot-fixing scandal of 2013 cost Lalit Modi and N Srinivasan their respective positions of power in the BCCI-IPL. Could they have been prevented? Absolutely.

Did either of the then omnipotent leaders feel they could have been toppled at any juncture? Certainly not. And because of these two incidents the entire basis of the IPL metamorphosed.

(Reprinted with the publisher's permission. Courtesy of Mail Today.)