Page 44 - IPL 2

i

t was a compelling visual. Lalit Modi, the chairman and commissioner of the IPL, sat on the steps of cricket centre.

News crews, who seem to hunt in dozens now, were getting every conceivable angle of a man who seemed pensive,
almost lost. The whole country was glued to their television screens to watch the culmination of the drama that
had played out for over a week and had the country in the thick of debate. Would the IPL happen or not?
The tickers ran fast and furious, writing the obituary of the tournament and its Commissioner. “He had tried to take
on the government, and failed”, they yelled to anyone who cared to listen.

“Home Minister shows who’s the boss”!
What had started off as a simple remark by the Home Minister at a press conference, snowballed into a controversy,
fuelled by a news media hungry for headlines.
India had a general election coming up. A once in 5-year occurrence in stable times, this year it was falling smack in
the middle of the world’s biggest cricket carnival. In India this means that the largest electorate in the world gets
out to vote for the largest democracy in the world. As is obvious, when such large numbers of the population are
mobilized, there is bound to be some tension. Paranoia is understandably high.

The IPL management understood these concerns and offered cooperation. No games 5 days before or after the
polling date in each of the franchise cities. Since all of India does not go to the polls on the same day, and that the
IPL was only to be played in 8 cities, where the dates were spread out over a few weeks, the 2 monoliths could
actually co-exist.
The centre left the decision to the states. The state authorities swayed like palm trees on a breezy afternoon. The
issue was pushed around like a ‘sarkari’ file. Cricket fans all over the country tried to make sense of what was going

on. Would the state decide or the centre? Would security be the state’s forces or the prerogative of the nation’s
forces? And somewhere between miscommunication and power struggles, the final word came in. The Government
of India decided that having a cricket tournament of such huge proportions would make the country a soft target
for terror attacks. With security forces already stretched, this was not a chance they were willing to take. The talk
show hosts put on their grease paint, the editors fuelled up their pens, the experts ironed their jackets and off they
all went. Blame flew left and right. Speculation was rife. But absolutely NO one knew what had really transpired
behind closed doors.

The talking heads would repeatedly cut to the visual that is embedded in every cricket fan’s mind. Lalit Modi sitting
on the steps of the cricket centre. Defeated. Or so it seemed. As we saw in the next few weeks, that presumption
was far from the truth. For what the naysayers were touting as failure, for this man was just another challenge.
He had already been thinking the unthinkable. The second edition of the Indian Premier League would be played
outside of its shores. Easier said than done, the giant machinery had to move bag and baggage.

“I looked it as a huge opportunity, if we had done the tournament in India then for us the chances of moving overseas
in the future would have taken many many business case studies. Chances are that we would have not done so. All
of a sudden here we had an opportunity because we were forced to do it, so we said lets make the most of it, may
be if we can make a success of it we would make this a global tournament.” Lalit Modi.
The only plausible options were England and South Africa. Lalit got on the phone with Cricket South Africa and with
old friend Etienne De Villiers, and soon after on a plane.

34 MISSION IMPOSSIBLE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 35