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Lalit Modi for termination of RR and CSK
The Indian T20 League must be suspended immediately to enable a root-and-branch shake-up of both the League and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi said on Thursday. Dipankar De Sarkar reports.
The Indian T20 League must be suspended immediately to enable a root-and-branch shake-up of both the League and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), former commissioner Lalit Modi said on Thursday.
“There should be a government enquiry and the franchises of Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings should be terminated, so that there can be a thorough clean-up at the top-level,” Modi told HT. “This is a real big bubble – we don’t know how many people are involved or how deep the whole thing runs.”
Modi said the twin inquiry into the BCCI and the League must be conducted by a “really strong person,” naming former BCCI presidents Shashank Manohar and IS Bindra as two men who could do the job.
Modi also believes the Tamil Nadu government needed to order a probe to examine if the BCCI had flouted any provisions of the Tamil Nadu Societies Act, under which it was set up. “The central government too has a role to play. I myself am looking at the Societies Act rules right now,” he said.
Modi has no faith in the International Cricket Council, the game’s governing body, to conduct a probe. “If for the last three weeks they have been unable to make a statement on the IPL, then it is clearly a toothless body. I am in shock and despair – it’s a buddy-buddy club.”
Modi, who has been in London since fleeing India in 2010, said, "when I ran the Rajasthan Royals I wouldn’t allow any wrongdoing. We were constantly tracking things and I was under constant threat by bookmakers – my phone was tapped.”
“I ran a tight ship. We were educating the team, and everybody was afraid of the action I would take. I can’t go back to India now because there have been three assassination attempts on me.”
