Lalit Modi - Love him, hate him…

He didn’t allow a free regime in sports.

Any sport or game shouldn’t be the franchise of only the rich, famous and powerful. If you look at Golf (in India), which is supposedly a sport only the rich and famous indulge into there are many among the top 10-20 golfers in the country who started off as caddies. Don’t think these are the Steve William’s of India. These are kids from poor families who worked in a club fetching the bag and balls of the rich and famous. I am not sure if the golfing establishment in India did anything to throttle these caddie turned players, leave alone small bickering here and there. I am talking about organized throttle here.

That is precisely why I don’t like Lalit Modi, the way he throttled ICL. And in effect took away a valuable couple of years from some promising Indian talent, the way he did it was despicable. I am sure we remember the extent his regime stooped to those days. Denying use of facility for those who signed up to the ICL, cancelling the pension of the ex-cricketers who were part of ICL were some gems we would remember. If only the PCR (Prevention of Civil Rights) Act of 1955 could be used against the IPL, there might me more cases than all those pending cases in the Indian courts.

But as they say “Every dog has its day”. Modi had his day and also saw its end. And when it did end, it ended as a shock to him of course and to the cricketing world as a whole. While one could say he has been paid back by the same coin, it might be a little harsh to say that.

Whatever he is, this is the man who made the Indian cricketing establishment sit up, be respected and feared by the other boards and the ICC. The man whose marketing techniques ensured the world had to buy the arguments of Shashank Manohar’s father Mr. Manohar and let “The Obnoxious Weed” off (make no mistake, I am not justifying what the Aussies did). It is the Indian money that the other cricket boards envy and fear about.

And Modi got them the money and with it came the new muscle.

Although Modi hijacked the idea from ICL, he still applied his mind like every boss in the world does to give that idea a bit of tweak and make it his.

There wasn’t a concept of franchise in ICL, Modi got all his rich, famous & powerful friends to come in and buy a team. There were people who said he is copying the western model of club sports, that he was trying to replicate the Super Bowl. There were also a few who went a bit farther and said IPL would the Super bowel (aka Shit) of cricket. That it would fail, collapse etc. We have seen 3 editions till date, and one last year where Modi took on the Indian government and moved the IPL to South Africa. Still, it was successful.

IPL gave life, money and fame to almost everyone who talked, wrote or involved in it. Including those who wrote books about the IPL model, talked about the economics of the league and even to a guy who masqueraded as a Fake IPL Player during the last season. This guy is now promoting his book across platforms, thanks to IPL & more importantly to its creator, Lalit Modi.

A couple of years ago we only saw shirts & trousers (of players) that had a logo. Modi rewrote the rules, now we see many logos that make up the shirt & trouser. Advertisers thought T20 was too quick a game that doesn’t offer enough advertising time. Modi made sure there were enough advertisements (meaning many happy advertisers who feasted on the eyeballs that IPL created) by creating the concept of a “Timeout” in cricket. He even branded the hits, catches, misses and almost everything imaginable in the game and even more like the annoying blimp, commercials on the big screen in the ground between balls.

Now that the business model is established and is getting the returns BCCI wanted, they don’t want Modi. This is typical of the BCCI and the brand of politics we have seen there. Dalmiya, Rungta, Lele, Dungarpur are examples of those who fell prey to the same brand of politics they espoused.

In all these there are some interesting questions that might well have some very interesting answers. Will we have those interesting answers out in the public domain is a million dollar question. Sp here are the questions…

You had a IPL governing council with some full and part time politicians as members. Would you want to exonerate those governing council members and bring in charges only on Modi?

Shouldn’t a Rajeev Shukla or a Sunil Gavaskar or Ravi Shastri be equally held responsible for what has happened?

Is Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi’s “we should have… We didn’t ” interviews in media be considered an excuse to let the governing council off while Modi is vilified?

How justified is Shashank Manohar trying to put the blame squarely on the professionals who were part of the IPL set up for all that has happened ?

To top it all, this is probably the second time Sharad Pawar has been unusually quiet since the food grain shortage issue was discussed in the Indian parliament.

All this said… I think Modi is going to make a comeback soon as the IPL commissioner. What do you think?

It happens only in Indian cricket!!