If legal betting has kept racketeers away from the field in England, it should work in India too. We don’t hear of racketeering in horse-racing, where betting is legal, do we Vacuous morality will serve no purpose
By the time the final match of this season’s Indian Premier league is played today at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, the scandalous story of how bookies and powerful individuals were manipulating the game of cricket to run a massive illegitimate betting racket is likely to take some more stunning twists and turns. It is entirely possible that the Board of Control for Cricket in India will show the door to its president, N Srinivasan, whose continuance in office became untenable — and unacceptable — on Friday night after his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, ‘owner’ of Chennai Super Kings, was arrested by the Crime Branch of Mumbai Police for his alleged role in the betting racket. It is equally possible that Srinivasan, who told newspersons on Saturday that he wouldn’t be “bulldozed or railroaded into resigning”, would just stay put and brazen it out. Public life in India is delightfully free of moral responsibility or else Manmohan Singh would have put in his papers a long time ago instead of clinging on to the Prime Minister’s office.
The facts, as they have emerged till now, are known to all, so there’s no merit in repeating them all over again. Nor is this the first time that what once upon a time used to be a gentleman’s game has been tainted by match fixing, spot fixing and betting. Mohammed Azharuddin and many of his cricketing mates were found committing offences that are no different from those which now dominate the news of the day and conversations in fashionable drawing rooms. The scale of the racket has morphed into a full-fledged enterprise, albeit illicit for more than one reason, but we must bear in mind that there’s more money going round today than the days when Azharuddin and his mates were racketeering on and off field, fetching disrepute to the game and themselves. Indeed, betting and match-fixing have been around since long. Allegations of match-fixing would dominate all conversation on football in my childhood. If East Bengal lost a match to Mohun Bagan, and vice versa, in the 1970s, the team and the coach would be accused of ‘match-fixing’ or ‘throwing the game’. There would be much animated chatter at home on the quantum of money changing hands — in those days a couple of thousand rupees was considered sufficient to lure players into betraying their club and disowning their jersey. It is anybody’s guess as to whether there was any substance to the allegations, but it would be near impossible to disprove them or deny the fact that off-field betting was very much a part of the football season in Kolkata.
We have travelled a long way from the 1970s when there was little money to spare on betting and players and their coaches tended to be fanatically loyal to their club jersey. Cricket, always a crowd-puller, has emerged as the dominant sporting event in India and is now touted as a ‘religion’ whose pantheon of gods comprises cricketers. Fanaticism of a different kind brings together Indians of all faiths who can never have enough of cricket, just as the faithful can never have enough of their religion. This, however, is only one part of the cricket story that has evolved over the past decade or so. The other, and I would argue the bigger, part of the cricket story is the game’s evolution into a spectator sport which in turn has become a virtual industry raking in windfall profits. The BCCI, which began its journey as a ‘charitable institution’, today presides over a virtual business empire that continues to grow every year as more and more money is pumped in by advertisers and sponsors and rights are sold to the highest bidder. Cricket today resembles a market where cricketers are auctioned like chattel and made to perform not for furthering the sport’s glory but entertaining the masses. Watching an IPl match is like watching an expensive cabaret at the lido or Moulin Rouge: Both leave you breathlessly anticipating more than what’s on display. Some would call it a Roman gladiatorial contest, although it’s not known whether gladiators were amenable to the idea of throwing away their lives for a fistful of silver. On the other hand, the can-can girls are believed to be partial to those who can afford to host private shows where knickers are barred.
Hence, to rage about how the betting syndicate headquartered in Dubai or those behind match-fixing and spot-fixing — for example, S Sreesanth, Vindoo Dara Singh (who had heard of Dara Singh’s son till he was carted off by the policeIJ) and Gurunath Meiyappan — are killing the ‘spirit of the game’ is really not worth the effort and, frankly, quite misplaced. That, however, does not diminish the nature of the crime that has been committed nor does it justify taking the faithful for a ride, although godmen and cultists, and those who hang around them, are known to have violated the trust of their followers. The scandal that has hit Indian cricket is no doubt shocking and shameful, but it also offers an opportunity to the authorities to do what should have been done long ago: legalise betting. If people can bet on horses they should have the right to bet on cricketers (or any other sportsperson) and matches. There is nothing immoral about betting; the sooner we rid ourselves of moral mumbo-jumbo, the better it shall be for the country. No purpose is served by taking a moral position, delegitimising betting and thereby enabling betting syndicates to flourish. There are no accurate estimates of the money that disappears underground via the illegal betting route, but it definitely runs into tens of thousands of crores of rupees. Worse, the betting syndicates are controlled by criminals like Dawood Ibrahim who use their ill-gotten profits to wage a relentless covert war on India. legalising betting would not only serve as a blow to them, it would also prevent the spawning of illicit money and its flight abroad. Government, of course, would earn sizeable revenue by way of taxes.
As for match-fixing and spot-fixing, the Government should go ahead and criminalise them. But the criminality of these misdeeds will stand scrutiny only when betting has been legalised. Unless that happens, it is futile to agonise over hand gestures and towels on field or a franchise owner leaking information on his team’s strategy to bookies in the hope of converting a crore of rupees into a couple of crore of rupees to be parked abroad and used for living the high life. Sadly, there is as yet no sign of Government getting real and converting a challenge into an opportunity. Instead, we have law Minister Kapil Sibal mouthing platitudes and promising a new law against betting and fixing. This will prove to be as ineffective as banning lotteries — matka (or numbers racket) is now a flourishing trade across the country, fetching rich rewards to those who manage the operations and the mafia that controls them. More money is made and lost on betting on the outcome of elections than is spent on election campaigns. This season’s IPl will not be the last tournament to witness betting; the claimed busting of the betting racket is only a minor hiccup for bookies and their masters, a hazard of the trade that shall continue to flourish. If living in denial could solve problems, we wouldn’t be where we are today, stuck without a paddle.
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi)