IPL Story, Part 2: From power to ruin, the league that devoured its own-OxBig News Network

First there was Lalit Modi. Then came Shane Warne, Andrew Symonds, Shilpa Shetty, Raj Kundra, Sunanda Pushkar, P Chidambaram and Shashi Tharoor. And then there were none. The IPL, like the mysterious host in Agatha Christie’s novel first published as Ten Little Niggers, invited many to its party, only to destroy them one by one. The IPL story is full of so many tragic incidents that even if you do not believe in voodoo, it is difficult to escape the suspicion that its first few editions were cursed.

Where do we start this haunting tale of tragedies? Perhaps the first quarter of the 19th century is a good reference point. In that period, around 1820, Spanish painter Fransico Goya painted the horrifying image of Saturn eating his son, ostensibly to escape the prophecy that one day his progeny would end his reign.

The IPL is a notch higher on the cruelty index. It devoured not just many of its own creations, but also its creator — Lalit Kumar Modi.

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To revisit the decline of Modi is to revisit the politics of that time. Because, in its first few years, the IPL was contested not only on the cricket pitch, but also in the corridors of power, making it a proxy for the Indian Political League of its time.

Modi’s decline began at the high noon of the UPA era. And in a tragicomic way, his decline coincides with the demise of the UPA.

The mutual destruction started just before the 2009 parliamentary elections when Modi got into an ego contest with the Congress-led government, especially the then home minister P Chidambaram.

Citing security concerns in the election season, the home minister asked Modi to delay the start of the IPL season by a few weeks. The tiff became a subject of mirth for many, especially the late BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who remarked that when Chidambaran was the finance minister, the economy was at risk, and now that he is the home minister, cricket is at risk. While everyone was having a hearty laugh, Modi took the event to South Africa, making the government look like a bunch of helpless bullies.

THE INEVITABLE FALL

Having won the first few rounds, Modi became more and more combative, creating enemies in every conceivable part of India. His inevitable fall came because of a woman about whom very little was known till then.

In 2010, two new teams were added to the IPL. The entire process was jinxed from the very beginning. First, the bidding was cancelled because Modi was accused of tailoring the terms to benefit two groups and one city-Videocon and Adani, and Ahmedabad. When the terms were revised, a little known consortium won the bid for the second team and decided to base it out of Kochi. This triggered something inexplicable in Modi that led to unexpected consequences.

In a series of tweets, Modi first revealed that the promoters of the new franchise-Kochi Tuskers Kerala- had given free equity to a Dubai-based woman called Sunanda Pushkar. The value of the shares, called sweat equity, was said to be worth around Rs 70 crore. The revelation led to the resignation of the then junior minister of external affairs, Shashi Tharoor, as it soon emerged Pushkar was his partner (they married soon after). It was the first of the many scandals that were to follow and destroy UPA four years later.

But, Lalit Modi was the first, and unintended, victim of his own war. An enquiry later revealed that Modi had fixed the terms of the original bids to favour a few industrialists, and when he didn’t succeed, he tried to arm twist the Kochi Tuskers to withdraw their bid.

His rivals within the IPL were already waiting to devour him. So, when his political patron, Maratha leader and Union minister Sharad Pawar turned his back on Modi, the IPL czar had nowhere to run except to Europe, from where he never returned. (Sunanada Pushkar also passed away a few years later under mysterious circumstances).

If you flip through the pages of the IPL photo album, you’d find some defining images. Some of them are poignant reminders of tragedies past, hopes destroyed and faith betrayed. One of them is of an ecstatic crowd shouting ‘Boom-Boom, Boom-Boom’ as Shahid Afridi strides out to bat. The din is so loud that like the thunder of clouds, it can be heard several metres away. It was cricket doing what a sport does best-pulling down boundaries, putting sportsmanship ahead of jingoism. But that faith was betrayed by Pakistan.

A year later, at the same venue, a defiant crowd is chanting ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. The city hosting the match had been hit by serial blasts just four days ago. But, its brave residents threw off the yoke of terror by stepping out in large numbers, daring the terrorists to try their luck again.

The other enduring memory is of Shilpa Shetty, the actor who bought a stake in the Rajasthan Royals, waving the blue flag, shouting her team’s war cry ‘halla bol’ from the first tier of Jaipur’s Sawai Man Singh Stadium. Shetty’s short affair with IPL ended in shame and tragedy after her husband Raj Kundra was banned for betting on cricket. With him also fell Gurunath Meiyappan, son in law of former BCCI president N Srinivasan.

But my personal favourite is the memory of Shane Warne smoking a cigarette near the dug-out after leading the Royals to their first and only triumph in 2008. His languid presence reminding us yet again that when a lion leads a pack of underdogs, he casts them in his mould. Warne passed away some years later while vacationing in Thailand. So did Andrew Symonds, the highest-paid overseas player of 2008.

Did I not tell you the IPL was jinxed? And that it devoured some of its own progeny?

Next, we will try to understand how the IPL, like Saturn, devoured cricket fans, and defined a new India.

(This is the second part of a short series on the IPL history that unfolded away from the cricket pitch. You can read the first part here.)

Sandipan Sharma, our guest author, likes to write on cricket, cinema, music and politics. He believes they are interconnected.