Who will list the atrocities carried through in the Indian fan’s name? Let’s ask Shashank Manohar, president of the BCCI and perpetrator of the latest outrage. In a statement on Sunday, he said that the IPL would be taken overseas. Cranking up the ego war with the government on the logistics of this IPL season, he apologised to the “people of India”, but comforted himself by saying that at least they’d now be able to watch the tournament on television. Really, Mr Manohar? Is this truly what’s behind this effort to start a bidding war between England and South Africa to host the IPL? Because if it is the Indian fan’s benefit that’s on the agenda, the BCCI’s latest announcement amounts to little less than the cricketing equivalent of high treason. It is nothing less than an attempt to abduct India’s favourite sport.

The government was ill-advised to have initially given the impression that India could not stage an election and a sport tournament. But to its credit, it hastened to offer cooperation in reworking the IPL schedule. By then the BCCI’s IPL czar, Lalit Modi, had made it a point of prestige, and heaven knows what else. Because every comment made by him since then — and we all know how much Modi likes to talk — has set new records for the crudeness with which he has staked ownership of Indian cricket. Cricket administrators in India hold a copyright to a certain kind of arrogance. For them cricket has been a state within a state. But as long as the game has played on, they have been allowed to be. Now that they have gone one step too far, and challenged the legitimacy of the Indian state, the government must consider what the law is so that cricket can be retrieved from such thuggish adventurism.

... contd.