Cricket's easy money

The mindboggling bids for the Kochi and Pune franchises of the Indian Premier League (IPL) — adding up to over Rs 3,300 crore between them — is indicative of one thing: very big money is getting into the game. And when very big money enters the picture, one can be sure that not all of it will be pearly white. This cautionary note is important, even though there is no doubt that the money will do wonders for this form of the game.
Any thinking person should ask several whys, whos and whats. Why is so much money getting into the game so soon? Who are the people behind it? When Bollywood gets aligned with cricket, what does it mean for the business of cricketainment? When money from the Sheikhdoms starts invading the sport, what does it portend?
It is no secret that both cricket betting and Bollywood have mafia money behind them, as the widely-publicised presence of Dawood Ibrahim in both arenas has made clear. With IPL now providing a confluence of both businesses, one has to worry about the colour of the money coming in.
This is not to say that any of it is funny money. But one has to put one’s antenna up when someone is willing to pay Rs1,500-and-odd crore for a franchise like Kochi — a city known neither for its quality of cricket nor its ability to groom cricketers.

It is also worth considering that among all forms of the game, T20 is
the diciest. The inglorious uncertainties of cricket apply more to T20
than test or one-day cricket. In the inaugural edition of the IPL in
2008, rank outsiders Rajasthan Royals won. In the following year, the
previous year’s bottom-rankers won. This is not to take anything away
from the quality of their wins. But surely T20 is the most unpredictable
form of cricket. One man’s heroics — or lack of it — can change the
result. If I were running a crooked betting syndicate, this is the kind
of game I would offer game-by-game odds on.
The way the bids
happened for the additional two slots at IPL also does not augur well
for the future of its funding. In the initial auction, the two winning
bidders — the Dhoots for Pune and the Adanis for Ahmedabad — bid at the
base price. This congruence suggests two possibilities: either they were
in cahoots or they thought the base price itself was too high to make a
business out of it.
In the next round, not only did the previous
two winners fail, the field was taken over by two other bidders —
Sahara and Rendezvous. What explains this initial reluctance to bid
being followed up by a rare exuberance in round two?
Now look at
the winners. While the Sahara group is a known hand in cricket
sponsorship, Rendezvous emerged as a joker in the pack, chaperoned by
minister of state for external affairs, Shashi Tharoor. Now why should a
government minister, known more for his book-writing skills than
book-building ones, not to speak of the ability to tweet into
controversy, want to suddenly back faceless individuals to buy a cricket
franchise?
Now cricket has been a happy hunting ground for all
varieties of politicians. From Sharad Pawar to Arun Jaitley to (more
recently) Narendra Modi, they are all in it for the possible publicity
spin-offs and the glory of associating with sporting icons. But if you
have the moolah, Rs1,700 crore will buy you as much influence as you
want. So what’s the extra allure in it for everybody?
It is not my
contention that everybody’s in it for dubious purposes. But there is no
guarantee that funny money will not get into the game. In the stock
markets, participatory notes give unknown investors the opportunity to
grow their wealth anonymously and even launder some of it in a tax
regime that is capital gains-friendly. In the real estate business,
politicians and criminals are
making hay by controlling land
supplies, using discretionary state power and buying up land through
benami deals.
As it is currently structured, IPL offers the
perfect setting to align funny money with straight money — not to speak
of reaping the publicity benefits of bringing Bollywood badshahs and
begums together with cricket’s pashas and prima donnas. IPL’s management
will have to exercise extraordinary caution if it wants to keep the
game unsullied as it expands into uncharted waters.
If I were Pranab Mukherjee, I would put my best sleuths and CAs to take a look. Not because there’s anything wrong already, but because something certainly can go wrong in the future. In corruption-ridden India, it is safe to presume that if there is scope for hanky-panky, there is a strong probability of it. IPL’s latest auction gives the game’s arbiters the chance for a strategic timeout to ponder about what kind of money is driving the game now and why.