Sir/Mam,
The reason why you are reading this letter, is either because you have trolled IPL 'n' number of times, claiming the entire tournament to be fixed, or because, you, being a true cricket fan, are absolutely tired of listening to the fixing allegations about the consecutive close matches of IPL. If you are in the group of the former, then, the blog is for you; if you belong to the latter group, maybe this is what you wanted to shout out loud & tell the world, for long.
So, let us begin with something that has been rocking all social media platforms, for the past few days.
KKR vs CSK- The advertise for the fixed IPL final, that was supposedly webcast on hotstar. The entire twitter & media went gaga over this, claiming its a fixed tournament and the finalists of the tournament are already decided by the organizing body, before the tournament began. Now, let us look a bit deep into this. I strictly believe there are 2 kinds of fans who follow cricket. The first, the fans who follow international cricket around the year and have some knowledge about how this game works & the second category of fans are Only IPL fans- they follow cricket for 2 months of IPL and tend to comment on very deep cricketing issues like Kohli's footwork and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar's death bowling skills. Now, the entire rumour that is going around this fixing of IPL, is done by the second category of fans. I have nothing against these Only IPL Fans (OPF). But dear OPF, its already 11 years of IPL and for these 11 years, you have been making superficial allegations of fixing the entire IPL tournament, so maybe its time, that you understand the stupidity of your claims.
Let us now come to the technical part of it, about why fixing a tournament like IPL is impossible. What OPF are necessarily claiming, is an enhanced version of match fixing i.e. tournament fixing. Now, tournament fixing is yet to be done, in the history of international cricket, so let us not even bring that up in our discussion. Let us discuss about something, much less severe than tournament fixing- match fixing. For readers who are unaware, match fixing is the event, in which, one team is illegally handed over money by the bookies, in exchange of them losing the match. Now, how many times has this happened in the 150 plus years of international cricket history? ONLY ONCE. Hansie Cronje was the culprit, as he along with 4 other South African players fixed a ODI match against India, in March,2000. Allegedly, as the cricket chronicle goes, Cronje & a few other senior players offered the money to the rest of the South African Team, on the centre table of the dressing room, and asked them to lose the match. So, in the 150 plus years of cricket history, match fixing was done only once- and that too, the crime came to the fore front, in the very next month. The alleged sportsperson were immediately punished, after a short trial & banned from cricket, with immediate effect. Now, this is what is match fixing, where you need to buy the top 6-7 players of the side, so that they deliberately go onto the field & lose the match for you.
Right, so then the question comes, why are the OPF claiming that IPL is fixed? This is because they cannot understand the difference between match fixing & spot fixing. When the fixing scandal involving S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila & Ankit Chavan was ripping apart IPL, in 2013, a lot of doubts were raised regarding the authenticity of the tournament. Those who raised doubts, never really understood that, the allegations necessarily were of spot fixing rather than match fixing. Now, how much is spot fixing different from match fixing? Spot fixing is fixing a particular ball of the match. Say, the bookies fix with individual cricketers, that the first ball of the 16th over will be a boundary or let's say the last ball of the ninth over will be a no ball- much similar to what, Asif, Amir & Butt did in the Lords Test in England 2010. So, actually, match fixing has never happened in the 11 year long history of IPL. The reason, why CSK & RR were banned, is because, claims of spot fixing against the team management was found to be true. Now, this is what superficial OPF fail to interpret. They assume that the reason why RR & CSK were disqualified for 2 years, is because both the teams deliberately lost matches, or in other words, they carried out match fixing.
Now, dear OPF, armed with this knowledge, imparted to you, try to understand the sheer incredulity of your claims. Basically, as per your claims, at least 6-7 core players of each IPL team are involved in this tournament fixing. That means around 56 players from 8 franchises need to be involved & paid for this massive scripted drama over 2 months. Now, also take into account, that, these 50 odd players are from different countries, different culture, have different ethics & values and belong to different societies as well- You are trying to say that none of them became a whistle-blower for an entire decade, about this 'supposed magnum-opus' organised by BCCI, because they were being paid well.
Sorry Sir/Mam- This is not Indian Politics. If you are trying to imagine that money can buy everything & everyone, in sports, irrespective of class, creed, values, upbringing, ethics & culture, then I am sorry to tell you dear reader, that you have yourself just put a big question mark on the ethics of your own culture.
Dear OPF, so now that you have understood that the allegations you were throwing upon IPL, for the last 5 years, are outrageous to say the least, I would request you to stop this cacophony about match fixing in IPL. IPL is the best thing, that could have ever happened to Indian cricket, if not World Cricket. The present Indian cricket team is brimming with players, who have found their way up to international cricket from IPL- and the pool of off-the-shelves players for the Indian team is increasing day by day. So, embrace IPL with both hands and enjoy the games with your friends & family.
"A lot of money does not always mean corruption"
Thank you,
A Cricket Fan.
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