…and you say this is not match-fixing?

It’s getting really difficult to perceive the Indian Premier League (IPL) as anything but a hundred-headed-hydra that has spread its poisonous tentacles to every nook of the cricketing globe to get the best for its Twenty20 extravaganza, whatever be the cost.

Sample this. IPL had the audacity to offer money to two South African teams to play the semifinals and final of the Standard Bank Pro20 tournament without their key players, who would otherwise miss the first week’s action in IPL!

Subsequently, one of the teams turned down the offer, while the other named a compromised squad even though it’s the business end of the tournament.

The South African players in question were asked to go home back right after the Kanpur Test to play in the Standard Bank Pro20 tournament, the final of which is scheduled on April 25. It meant IPL, which kicks off on April 18, would be without the Proteas for full one week.

Realising it may take some sheen off the event, IPL offered USD 100,000 to Cape Cobras and the Titans, asking them to spare the players for the Indian league, even though that meant playing the semifinals and final without their key players!

Titans (Albie Morkel, AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn belong to this franchisee), however, refused to fall for the lure and turned down the offer. But intriguingly, Cobras have excluded Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher and Ashwell Prince from their team – paving way for their IPL participation right from the start – even though they included Graeme Smith and JP Duminy in the squad for the domestic Twenty20 tourney.

Offering teams money not to field their key players should be reason enough to nab someone on charges of match-fixing and I’m afraid ICC’s connivance with IPL means the governing body itself, rather inadvertently, became the perpetrator of the crime it claims to be fighting against.

Image: Michael Philip Erb