It is difficult to erase the image of a profusely sweating N. Srinivasan, then the chief of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, trying to convince “the voice of the nation” that his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, CEO of IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings or CSK, was “a cricket enthusiast”. Meiyappan was arrested and charged for cricket betting, which is illegal in India.
One assumes there was enough evidence to warrant the action. But now it seems Lalit Modi had a part to play as well. A series of e-mail exchanges between him and his coterie (which Outlook has reviewed) reveal how the Indian Premier League founder played the media, the public, BCCI officials and the courts to get back at the former BCCI boss.
Modi’s IPL with its T20 format certainly made the game more entertaining, and soon gave the man and the governing council more prominence in cricket than even the BCCI. It was inevitable then that the first hint of a scandal (and it was more than a hint), and all hell would break loose. As it did in 2010,...
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