A compilation of the events that led to the 2013 IPL batting-fixing scandal and its consequences
There is little doubt that despite its shortcomings, cricket’s Indian Premier League (IPL) has given a new direction to Indian sports bodies to try out something hitherto unseen and unheard of in the country—the league format of conducting tournaments, which brings a quick buck too. Be it the Pro-Kabaddi League or the Indian Badminton League, various sports have benefited by taking a leaf out of the lucrative IPL.
Since 2008, when it was launched with much fanfare, the IPL has also inspired many fans and cricket experts to come up with explicatory papers and books on the league—it has particularly caught the fancy of management students eager to find lessons in its astounding success. And Desh Gaurav Sekhri’s Not Out: The Incredible Story of the IPL is the latest cut-and-run.
The book is actually a compilation of the events that led to the 2013 IPL batting-fixing scandal and its consequences, rather with a new perspective about the controversy. The writer has depended heavily on newspaper and website reports for this book and does well to acknowledge all those sources. The events narrated have been told innumerable times and in all forms of the media. Where the book scores is that it covers the betting-fixing controversy till just a couple of months before the final Supreme Court judgement on the IPL betting case (read reforms in BCCI) came on July 18, 2016. As the title suggests, it tries to give a thumbs up to the IPL despite its frailties. The author also lists some suggestions on making the IPL a better organised tournament—one of them being the advice to ‘privatise’ it.
It concludes with a lot of hope for the league format in cricket. “Even today, if it puts its books in order, overhauls the governance lapses in anti-corruption...and nipping the conflict of interest, the IPL will thunder ahead like an incredible machine,” writes Sekhri.
This hopeful book is certainly not for those cricket aficionados who believe that the Twenty-20 format will ring the death knell of the game by drowning fans in big hits that cloy as they get bigger and teach youngsters to disregard the virtues of a straight bat.