Is the Chastity of the IPL Pure Enough?

Is the Chastity of the IPL Pure Enough?: “An intense IPL match, where 15 runs were required off the last over. After a giant wheel alike twist and turns, the match finishes off the last ball and a million breathe a sigh of relief from the intense adrenaline rush. After some minutes of acute silence and sheer tension, the conversation that follows goes like:

Winning Team Fan: OMG! What a Finish! This is called holding of Nerves!!

Losing Team Fan: Shut Up!!! It is a waste of time watching these matches. Everything is fixed!!

Winning Team Fan: How come 2 sixes of the last two deliveries be fixed?!

Losing Team Fan: You don’t know anything! How can that bowler bowl a full toss in the last ball? Even he has an economy rate of over 10 and has the reputation of losing his length, still he cannot do this!! There are some big heads behind the scenes! Everything is fixed!

Winning Team Fan: Yup! Gotta admit, our franchise owner invested a decent amount this season in fixing!! Cheers!!!!”

Well this is the discussion that goes on in every street and city after the matches of the IPL, especially after the ones where things go down to the wire. In fact, the Governing Council of IPL invited these disgraceful topics when the league was stained by some crooked spoilers of the game. We have seen players like Sreesanth, Chandila and others caught red-handed with their involvement in match fixing scandals. Also, some particular owners of their respective franchises were found involved in betting by the court of law in India. And these injected a sense of disbelief among the common people about this league. The conversation might not seem logical but such things are talked out in open due to some flawed management by the GC and the BCCI. Everyone reading this would surely have hundreds of reasons behind why they think the IPL is fixed! But since, it is said that every coin has two faces, let us take the trouble of flipping the coin and explore out how IPL can be or rather might be pure enough. It’s just our conceptions that make us point out the flaws even if they are not at fault. Let’s dig deep.

Have we ever thought about the fixing logic when there are three slots remaining open to 5 five teams for play off qualification after 53 matches? This has been the case in this IPL. As a matter of fact, MI qualified for the play offs and that too as the second team in their very last match. Well, the immediate logic that comes into a fan’s mind is that MI were bound to qualify as the first qualifier was being held at Mumbai itself. Well in that case, I would like to ask that whether the rain, which washed out the RCB Vs. DD match just prior to that leading to such a situation, was even fixed? RCB might have won that game if the game hadn’t been washed out and the scenario might have been different all together.

Coming to the point, have we also thought about the logic of how the big sixes of 105metres, 108metres and bigger can be fixed? Adding to that, it might be also somewhat daunting to find the same behind the 674 sixes that have been hit and the 673 wickets that have fallen in the tournament. Let us draw further instances, the devastating Yorkers from Mitchell Starc and Lasith Malinga, the mysterious deliveries from Sunil Narine, the economical spells from Ravindra Jadeja, the power hitting from Gayle, Pollard, the switch hits by AB de Villiers, the classy straight drives by Rahane, Kohli and Gambhir, the incredible pull shots by Rohit Sharma, the flicks of Yuvraj Singh, the batting brute force of McCullum, the magnetic fielding of the CSK line up in the likes of McCullum, Du Plessis and others can never be fixed with any kind of logic as far as the cricketing brain goes.

Also, it requires talent and ability to strike 80 odd runs in less than 6 overs against the bowling strengths of Steyn, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and others. Even if full tosses are bowled at the batsmen, the batsmen have to hit them out of the park for a six in front of a 50K audience which is no joke.

It requires sheer brilliance from a player to strike 175 runs in a single innings. Just like the same, it requires calibre for a veteran pacer to strike 22 wickets in a single season after being out of international cricket for over 2 years. This has been the case for Ashish Nehra in this season. It requires spell bound talent for an uncapped player to strike over 20 wickets in a single season in the batting dominated format. This has been the cases for Mohit Sharma, Yuzvendra Chahal and Axar Patel in the history of IPL.

Also, it requires something extraordinary for players to fight out their international teammates in IPL. We have seen the mouth-watering contests between Steyn and de Villiers, Bravo and Pollard, Harbhajan and Dhoni, Zaheer and Gambhir and others for throughout the seasons.

It is the world cricket, which have benefited from the IPL, especially the uncapped Indian Players. Foreign players have also got the exposure to play on sub-continental soils. Uncapped players fetched the experiences of playing around big audiences with international superstars. It is the platform where geographical boundaries between countries don’t count. It is the spirit of Cricket and friendliness that matters. We have seen the friendship between Gayle and Kohli, Yuvraj, also Bravo and Raina, McCullum and Dhoni. And everything has been possible because of IPL.

Also, in a league where the gentlemen of the game in the likes of Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly, Gilchrist, Hayden, Sangakkara, Kallis, AB de Villiers, Graeme Smith, Laxman, Kumble, Ponting, Raina, Dhoni and others have played, one cannot imagine something related to fixing. It might well go down as an insult of these legends. But indeed, there have been some bad apples in the bunch, but it doesn’t denote that the entire bunch is rotten.

If such high voltage matches, if such rain-intruded games, where the legends of the game play and where players strike hat-tricks’, where players hit dozens of sixes, the league where players risk their bones to take a catch, a place where the best minds spend days to formulate strategies and where things go down to the super over (there have been 6 super overs in IPL history) are FIXED, then we might take a minute and salute to such FIXERS. Because fixing hell lot of things require some supernatural powers and some God-alike talents for sure.