dna edit: Far from a clean sweep

A gifted sportsman squandering his talent is always cause for regret, no matter the manner in which he does so. The life ban handed out to Sreesanth by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) means that a pace bowler who had every quality required to succeed in India colours — and yet couldn’t quite manage to do so consistently — will now never have the opportunity to fulfil his promise. Neither will Mumbai spinner Ankeet Chavan, also given a life ban, and in all likelihood, Gujarat player Amit Singh; time will have run out for the latter by the time his five year ban ends.

The hope is that by acting as strictly as it has, based on BCCI Anti-Corruption and Security Unit chief Ravi Sawani’s inquiry report, Indian cricket’s apex body has sent a message that will deter other players from following suit. But based on past evidence, the odds are stacked against this.

If Mohammad Azharuddin’s fall from grace at the end of the last millennium did not dissuade Sreesanth and the others, there is no certainty that their fate will serve as adequate warning for the next generation of cricketers. Disciplinary action alone is not enough; there is a need to understand the game’s underlying economic architecture. Only then will cricket boards be able to structure incentives and disincentives in such a way that the profit to be made from playing a clean game outweighs the risk of match or spot fixing.

For all that it is decried as a body blow to the sport’s purity, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a net positive in this regard. Players with little hope of making it to the national side — those who would have found it difficult to make a living from the sport in past years — can now hope for a slice of the pie.

That is a substantial incentive. But when it comes to disincentives, going after just the players is not enough. Those higher up the value chain must be dealt with as well — and there, the BCCI has fallen down on the job. Its management structure is a web of conflicting interests and political alliances. The compromised panel set up to investigate the culpability of Chennai Super Kings team principal Meiyappan Gurunath — who also happens to be BCCI chief-in-exile N Srinivasan’s son-in-law — and Rajasthan Royals’ co-promoter Raj Kundra showed that with dismaying clarity.

Legalising betting is another essential step towards cleaning up cricket. While players from other countries have been implicated in fixing, it is an uncomfortable fact that South Asia is the nexus of the entire enterprise. Not coincidentally, betting happens to be illegal in India but legal in a number of other cricket-playing nations like England and Australia. It should come as no surprise that driving betting underground in the country that is the hub of the sport’s economic activity will have a vitiating effect on the entire game. The current crop of guilty players may have been dealt with — but unless these larger factors are addressed, it won’t be the last one.