IPL: Crass Cricket – Yes, Completely Fixed – Too Fantastic

Sometime back a friend’s status message on Facebook read “IPL – Indian Pre-fixed League”. Sounds scandalous, witty, funny, and true. And indeed if there were some who believed it was not fixed, most of them would have changed camps in the last 15 days. Of course, if the administrative and ownership structure of the league was so tangled up and screwed up, totally devoid of the concept of independence of responsibilities and benefits, then how could the sport itself be clean? And of course, it makes for good reading and good discussions. We so thrive in scandal.

Well, I for one, have differing thoughts. There are many reasons:

First, this is not the first time that the sport of cricket has been governed by an opaque administration. Right from the days of Maharaja of Vizianagram (Vizzy), who royally financed and screwed up India’s 1936 tour to England to the days of Jagmohan Dalmiya and most recently Sharad Pawar. We all know that they all had some or other interest in the sport of cricket other than the love for the game and ability to administer it. Does that mean that all of Indian cricket’s (and by implication other teams’) achievements were solely financed by their boards? Yeah let’s believe it. It sounds even more scandalous.

But even if the boards (or commissioners) financed all the events in all the cricket matches till date, has anyone tried to think how fixable is this complex sport? Take the bowler, there are several variables that control his ability to follow his paymaster’s command. There has been one bowler in the last decade who could control his line and length to a very large extent – Glenn Mcgrath. He ended up with 563 test wickets at 21.64 a piece. He also took 20 T20 (IPL format – most probably fixed all the way) wickets at 24 a piece. Some twisted fixing that!

Now the batsman. Yeah this guy must sure be able to follow the paymaster’s order. With that large piece of willow in the hand he should be able to hit it straight into a fielder’s hand, at will. Anyone who picked up even a plastic bat in the childhood would tell you that for a batsman, placement at will, all the time, is almost impossible. And those who can place the ball where they want, almost at will, are generally called great batsmen, because they win matches with those well placed strokes.

Before anyone accuses me of thinking that fixing = losing, let me clarify. Your point is that the broad script is fixed. Yes of course. A broad script is to be followed. But this is what bothers me here. What happens if a bowler, acting according to the script, bowls long hops, waiting to be struck out of the ground, but the stupid batsman does not follow his script and is able to act out only a single? What if this happens again and again in the play? The broad script goes for a toss!

The same can happen if the bowler fluffs his script - while the batsman is waiting for a loose delivery, he may get a toe-crushing yorker. The point is broad scripts work for films, where they have retakes and for theatre, where they have rehearsals. For a team sport, the bosses need a fervent wish and robots as players (or luck, which would make them punters and the game, legitimate).

Naah! Most people would not be convinced by this feeble logic. It has happened in cricket before they say. Yes it has. But let us see the details:

1) First reference of fixing that I know of – some English county bowler fed full tosses to Vizzy for a few deliveries, in return for a gold watch. Why he could not continue doing it? In his own words “I gave him a full toss and a couple of long hops, but you can't go on bowling like that all day, not in England." The actor could not continue acting. My point above.

2) This one I saw live and even as a kid I could figure it out that Mongia and Prabhakar did not want to win against the WI in 1994. Now that’s how a fixed match pans out. Have we seen anything like that in the IPL?

3) This one involved Hansie Cronje, who was a self-confessed fixer. Other than all the money he got from “MK” for trying to fix matches and passing on some information, he and Nasser Hussein (innocent and unpaid – poor fella) decided to forfeit two innings of the fifth test match in 2000 to induce a result. And indeed South Africa lost. Any such event in IPL?

All other events related to fixing in cricket’s history are either exchange of information (Warne and M. Waugh) or acquaintance with book-makers (Azharuddin and A.Jadeja) or unsuccessful attempts at throwing away the wicket (H. Gibbs). The last one is a classic case of the actor getting it wrong and screwing up the “script”.

Information could have been exchanged during IPL and book-makers might have attended IPL Nights, but I fail to understand how does that help the matches follow the scripts? And aren’t we saying that Modi himself was the bookmaker in this case? Even then he can’t ensure that the 109th ball will go for a six.

In the end, all I have to say is it is next to impossible to fix an entire match in almost any team sport. What is possible is something called “spot fixing”. For some part of the match, some of the players try to underperform. That indeed is possible, highly probable in IPL, and is unpardonable.

But because of spot fixing or because of financial and administrative opaqueness at the top, saying that each match is script based is just a little bit too indulgent-in-scandals (or cynical) for my taste.