New Delhi: As IPL season 12 approaches with great rapidity, only three of the original eight IPL franchises remain in their original avatars. The curse of the IPL has decimated and destroyed many reputations and singed many promoters and barons.
And, with a new broadcast deal kicking in, the original franchise owners are waiting for a windfall, a payout in spades for staying the course over the last 11 years.
Mukesh Ambani-owned Mumbai Indians; Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla and Jay Mehta-owned KKR; and Mohit Burman, Ness Wadia, Preity Zinta and Karan Paul promoted Kings XI Punjab have remained intact in terms of ownership patterns and played all 11 seasons.
Of the original eight, Vijay Mallya (Royal Challengers Bangalore) has self-destructed and flown the coop to England; Deccan Chargers owner T. Venkat Ram Reddy is hanging on for dear life, his company, Deccan Chronicle Holdings, battling for survival in the NCLT as part of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code; Subroto Roy of Sahara (Pune Warriors) found himself on the wrong side of the Supreme Court to land in jail for two years; Raj Kundra part owner of Rajasthan Royals (RR) and N. Srinivasan, owner of Chennai Super Kings, were turfed out of the IPL for two seasons as penal punishment for match fixing.
Worse still, Srinivasan himself lost his BCCI and ICC crowns and witnessed his sphere of influence eroding.
From the day IPL was architected by former IPL chief Lalit Modi on behalf of the Indian cricket board, a large swathe of men and women associated with it have lost their mojo.
Lalit Modi himself became its first high-profile victim in the kerfuffle with Srinivasan, who shut him out of the league, the game and the country itself.
Over its 11-year history, the list of victims is long and illustrious, the tree having been shaken again and again.
Team owners, associates, players, principals, cricket board czars and even broadcast CEOs have fallen by the wayside.
The imposing facade of this cathedral of commerce and dubious shenanigans belies its decaying and termite-infested interiors.
The biggest casualty, of course, remains the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) itself; from purportedly being a charitable organisation working towards the development of the game in the country, it transformed into a commercial organisation that made money from the game through the IPL.
Actually, the IPL became the cricket board’s worst enemy, a weapon of mass destruction erasing everything in its path.
From taxmen to the Supreme Court, everybody began to hound the BCCI, its unfettered independence under challenge.
Its autonomy was questioned by the apex court, its very structure was under the microscope and the Justice R.M. Lodha panel’s prognosis — a radical and tectonic change in the way the board functions.
Even Shah Rukh Khan has found himself being repeatedly interrogated by the ED for allegations of round-tripping and inflating the price of shares in Kolkata Knight Riders.
Even Ness Wadia and Priety Zinta, owners and team principals at Kings XI Punjab, have fought a bitter and messy battle over love lost, resulting in a molestation case being slapped on the former by the latter in 2014.
Last year, the Bombay High Court asked the two to finish off the case. (IANS)
