Vivo IPL and the Spot-fixing Controversies:

Indian Premier League is one of the most happening leagues in cricket as it involves a lot of money. Probably it’s the league in which most gambling is suspected to happen every season as the biggest bookies are from India themselves. Nearly every season there’s some new controversy related to betting and spot-fixing by players. The Indian Cricket Board (ICB) is trying its best to prevent this from happening because it’s damaging the image of India in world cricket.

The first biggest scandal which came out and became viral, was when in 2013 the Delhi police arrested three Cricketers on the charges of spot-fixing, they’re; Sreesanth, Ajit Chandela and Ankit Chavan. These cricketers were representing the Rajasthan Royals team in IPL 2013. Similarly, in a separate case the Mumbai police arrested the team principal of Chennai Super Kings Gurunath Meiyyapan and Vindu Dara Singh for having links with Bookies and on allegations of being involved in betting. On account of this incident the Rajasthan Royals suspended the contract of all three players until the investigations were going on. The Delhi Police claimed that both Sreesanth and Chavan have confessed for being involved in spot-fixing. The police also claimed that Chandela was working for the Bookies and he also tried to convince other players for spot-fixing including Chavan. The seventeen people including cricketers; Sreesanth, Chandela and several other Bookies were released on bail on 10 th June 2013 by Delhi court due to lack of evidence to be charged under the Act of MCOCA. The Delhi police chief Neeraj Kumar officially told in a press release that they have been tapping phones since April 2013. Vindu Dara Singh was arrested for allegations of having relations with Bookies for this spot-fixing case.

But, the biggest controversy raised was of the involvement of Gurunath Meiyyapan who wasn’t only the team principal of Chennai Super Kings but was also the son-in-law of N. Sreenivasan the president of BCCI. Meiyyan was arrested when the phone records of Vindu Dara Singh showed connections between them. After this new scandal, the Chennai Super Kings officials held a press conference on 24th May 2013 and disowned Meiyyapan of having any sort of connections with the Chennai Super Kings. Due to the involvement of Meiyyapan the BCCI president, N. Sreenivasan was the victim of extreme criticism as his own son-in-law was alleged of being involved of spot-fixing. The opinion of media was clearly showing that maybe BCCI was behind all this foul play. Because of these incidents, the fairness level in IPL became questionable.

Prior to this 2013 case, a news channel India TV on 14th May 2012 claimed to prove spot-fixing in IPL by airing a sting operation which showed the involvement of five people i.e. TP Sudhindra (Deccan Chargers),  Mohnish Mishra (Pune Warriors), Amit Yadav, Shalabh Srivastava (Kings XI Punjab) and Abhinav Bali a Delhi cricketer. The IPL President of that time Rajiv Shukla immediately suspended these 5 players.

Later, during the 8 th season of IPL in 2015 the Enforcement Directorate’s Ahmedabad Branch busted a 2000 crore betting racket in which some well known big names were also involved. According to the investigations made by EB, it was discovered that the biggest Bookies use commentators present in the stadium to get the ball to ball update of the match before it can be seen on TVs. This delay of 5-6 seconds between the airings of shot on TV, the real bets are made; the Bookies decide either to put money or to take it out. This trick works best on betting websites like cicketlivebet.com, whose servers are based in different countries.

Let’s see what this season of IPL has stored for us. Will the BCCI be able to control spot-fixing controversies and ensure a fair season of IPL in 2018? Will this season belong to the RCB? With so many Questions in our minds, we are eagerly waiting for IPL 2018 to finally start.

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