We must be thankful to Lalit Modi. The IPL czar was digging up his own “grave” in a sense. His intention while tweeting was allegedly to drag Shashi Tharoor and his lady friend Sunanda Pushkar who is based in Dubai, allegedly to deprive Kerala an IPL slot and make way for another business honcho Adani into the picture and help him to shift the venue to Gujarat. Lalit Modi unfortunately was opening up the Pandora’s Box and in the process he fell into the ditch he had dug up to push Tharoor into it and consequently Tharoor lost the ‘coveted’ post of Minister of State for External Affairs. Along with his resignation came out many a skeleton out of the IPL closest about which up till then we had only some inkling.
Now with the entry of Income Tax Sleuths and Enforcement Directorate raids which still continue obviously at the instance of Central Government. Now we are witnessing the amusing scenes of big guns, film personalities, corporate honchos and political leaders running hither and thither for cover. The outcry for the resignation of IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi and if he refused to quit sack him forthwith rouse from different quarters. The adamant Modi was in no mood to quit. He was suspended from IPL last night by Shashank Manohar, the Head of BCCI..
The inner plays behind the curtains are being revealed before the public, the tales of millions of unaccounted black-money being white-washed getting wider publicity. A murky world being exposed to the horror and anger of common man and avid cricket lovers. The ugly truths that keep pouring out are that with cricket being made a scape goat, it was a murky story of crores of rupees changing hands through match-fixing. And now it has bee made public that the betting and match-fixing had its genesis since IPL II tournament played in South Africa. The said tournament which ought to have been played in India was shifted to South Africa at the last minute after a tug of war between an adamant Home Minister Chidambaram and the determined Czar of IPL Lalit Modi over the issue of security cover to the participating teams. It was a difficult time for India with the incessant threats of terrorists and Chidambaram was not willing to spare security forces for providing security cover to IPL teams at a difficult juncture. An old story, so no need to go further.
Modi as an astute entrepreneur is a man of innovative ideas and hence he was instrumental in introducing ‘strategic time-outs’ for helping commercial firms by providing more time to advertise their products and to add colour and charm to the matches introduced the participation of cheer-girls by each team. ‘Great’ is the only apt word to describe it. Frankly speaking as a spectator I was not at all charmed by the so-called charm from the scantly dressed beautiful girls instead I felt pity on them as they were brought to the occasion as puppets with strings in the hands of somebody sitting somewhere. I thought about inorder to earn a living these girls were in fact pretending to be cheerful by dancing in front of the spectators.
The National TV news channel sensing a rich harvest from the great circus going on with adventures and comics plunged into the picture and round the clock telecasting of news reports and interviews setting aside the burning issues the nation faces like the ‘mounting food’ inflation, like hike in fuel prices, detailed reports and analysis of Prime Minister ManMohan Singh’s visit to USA to participate in the Nuclear Security Summit at Washington and the meetings of IBSA(India, Brazil and South Africa) and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) at Brasilia of Brazil reaping rich harvests. The debates on IPL imbroglio nevertheless goes on with spirit and vigour and one newspaper reported it is NDTV 24X7 which comes first in the race with CNN-IBN close behind. This is not at all intended to cast aspersions on the National news TV news channels. On coming to learn about something sensational all of them selectively forget the stories they were following till then, which are of national significance, no follow-up of the stories taken into account. The magnitude of criticism leveled against such channels by media watchers across the spectrum doesn’t in anyway teaches these channels to rectify their wrongs not because they are not aware of it only because of their obsession with TRP ratings. It is time to change otherwise it will be too late.
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