IPL Spot Fixing Verdict: Shilpa Shetty’s Husband Raj Kundra Slapped With Life

Meiyappan, who is the son-in-law of ex-BCCI president N. Srinivasan and the face of CSK till 2013, has been banned for life from cricketing activities while Kundra, the husband of film star Shilpa Shetty and a Rajasthan Royals team owner, has been slapped a similar penalty. “They (Meiyappan and and Kundra) have brought the game to disrepute”. Of far more significant import for the BCCI will be the governance and reform recommendations that the Lodha Committee is yet to submit.

TV reports said both teams as well as Meiyappan and Kundra were likely to appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court.

Justice Lodha claimed that the two franchises stood suspended as of pronouncement, the technical ramifications of the judgement regarding the teams remain unclear.

BCCI running two teams may not be economically viable since the entire cost of managing the team and playing the players their salaries will have to be borne by the Board.

It’s clear to most observers that Indian cricket is rotten.

But Ganguly said they had not had an opportunity to question Srinivasan about the IPL because the panel’s decision had not been made public by the time their meeting commenced.

“MSD (Dhoni) is only 34 years old and in a few years will be bidding goodbye to global cricket”, former India captain Sunil Gavaskar told NDTV.

The BCCI, which is now considering appealing a compensation award to the Kochi franchise, announced Wednesday that the Champions League Twenty20 – an annual tournament it helped launch in 2009 for the leading domestic teams from T20 competitions around the world – would be cancelled.

While IPL has a plethora of brands on board, one can’t ignore the fact that majority have signed short-term deals spanning for a year or at the most two years.

The verdict, read out by former Chief Justice of India Justice R.M. Lodha in the presence of the other committee members, said the cricketers who were part of the two teams were free to join any other outfit.

The bottom line is if the franchises were to fold and not feel inclined to honour the deal with players, the BCCI would be obliged to get out their cheque book.

Asked why the committee did not itself ban the franchises, Lodha said that would have exceeded its remit.

“The purity of the game has been affected”.

Rajasthan Royals won the inaugural event in 2008 under the captaincy of Australian spin legend Shane Warne, but have failed to make the final since then. And the fans are already enraged at both their franchise owners and the cricket board.

If implemented, experts say, this will spell doom for the BCCI as it will find itself mired in yet another “conflict of interest” web.

Secretary of the unrecognised Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) Aditya Verma, who is the petitioner in the IPL spot fixing case, demanded that the BCCI should withdraw Srinivasan’s nomination as its representative in the ICC.