The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) held a crucial meeting
today in Mumbai and banned five domestic cricket players found guilty of
corruption or indulgence in spot fixing. BCCI’s new anti-corruption Unit gave
its report to the disciplinary committee and after deliberations in the meet
the decisions were taken.
The five players were charged with varying degrees of culpability to
negotiating or bargaining for money for spot fixing in domestic cricket matches
and to loose talk or bragging bringing the game of cricket into disrepute.
TP Sudhindra, the chief offender, was banned for life while
Shalabh Srivastava was
banned for five years. The other three namely
Mohnish Mishra,
Amit Yadav and
Abhinav Bali, charged with lesser offence, were banned for one year each. These
players were notionally suspended on May 15, 2012 after a television news
channel
sting operation exposed their involvement in spot fixing.
The BCCI verdict has been hailed as a tough measure to crack corruption
and it is expected to act as a deterrent. But these five cricketers are only
fringe actors and just two of them managed to figure in a few Indian Premiere
League (IPL) matches without showing any exceptional abilities. They have no
impact or influence on Indian cricket and that seems to be the basic reason for
the harsh punishment. Okay, it might prove a deterrent to the small fish not to
go for the bait straightaway! But this would be till they make it big. Once they
make it big in Indian cricket they become untouchable and immune to the cricket
Board itself. The biggest of deals always go unpunished despite being tremendous
acts of corruption.

If fact, this applies to every field of Indian activity. Once you have
clout you can dare and do anything. In the Biggest Indian Tennis fight we saw
the ‘key’ players dictating terms in careless abandon. Their garrulous demands
were accepted through pitiful begging, personalized negotiations and Olympian
compromises. Maybe as a classic finishing touch, the fifth seeded Grand Slam
winning mixed doubles pair of Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza
crashed out of the
Wimbledon today losing
pathetically to an unseeded pair in a second round match. The London Olympics lies round the corner to
carry the ‘fight’ forward!
For the moment though let us welcome BCCI fighting corruption!
Comments
As it is our second 11 is on the w.i tour and we are loosing badly there.imagine in just a couple of years when we tour australia,england,s.a what a weak test team we could have, not forgetting that just last year we lost all the 4 tests against england and australia.
I.p.l is only meant for promoting cricket to non cricketing nations with its dashing style and should never be allowed to take a pre ponderance over test cricket.
Strange in india ipl players are choosen more than say a good ranji player for a test side.
Look at ravinder bisla who won kkr this ipl,he has not got a take from any ranji side, at least this is what the news paper says.
Could it be the other way round that he will now always like making it ipl a priority to test or any other domestic championship?
Yes in the news channel indian test players talk that playing for the nation comes first and then only the ipl but are they speaking from their heart or just talking like a political diplomat?