Expressing apprehension that sport, the modern day battle between nations, is at serious risk of losing its moral compass, ace cricketer Rahul Dravid on Tuesday said legal intervention is required to address integrity issues.
Speaking at an international conference on anti-corruption organized by the CBI, Dravid said, "The nature and scale of the challenge have revealed themselves to be such that it is impossible for sport's internal self regulation structures to effortlessly handle, without external support and legislative backing." "To my mind, the question is no longer whether the law must intervene but it is how, to what extent and on what issues," he said.
He said a significant part of sports regulation and managerial time is spent on codes of conduct including anti-corruption, anti-doping and anti-cheating but these do not appear to have led to the desired results. Sporting bodies do not have the ability under the laws of the land to conduct surveillance on communications or conduct search and seizure of premises. The jurisdiction of a sports body is limited to only punishing insiders and to prohibit their future participation in the sport. "These deterrents are possibly inadequate in scope and do not account for and punish a member of other participants in the dragnet of corruption," he underscored.
He also highlighted the need for legal reform and turn of national and state legislators and the criminal law administration to intervene definitively to uphold integrity issues in Indian sports. He further flagged four integrity issues in the country including age fraud, doping, deliberate underperformance and player involvement in the betting industry. The issues of doping, deliberate under-performance and the player-bookie nexus have plagued practically every sport worldwide and India is no exception.
"These practices give rise to deep cynicism about every exceptional performance and encourage questions to be raised about every unexceptional performance. The simple enjoyment of the glorious uncertainties of sport has perhaps been lost forever….Failure to address these challenges not only risks a serious threat to the all round confidence in sports…but will also enable entrenchment of new norms in the subculture of sport." He also cited the example of cycling, where no cyclist believed they stood a genuine chance unless they doped.