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July
1, 2015
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Vol-1; Issue-3; ISSN 2394-885X [
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Prologue:
The Indian Premier League for T20
Cricket or IPL in popular in its 6th edition had utterly been mugged
into the Spot Fixing or simply say, a ‘spot betting racket’ that caused a
massive uproar in the country. The manifestation of the uproar is quite noteworthy
on many aspectsN1. Some
cricketers found guilty were detained and interrogated by the Delhi Police to
have unearthed some more names from Mumbai film industry, IPL franchise owners
and finally its underworld connection too. Popular media spent enough time and
space to cover the aftermaths and plausible interpretations of what actually
happened. Within a couple of weeks all detainees got released on bail. The
highest Court has already given BCCI the charge of investigating the whole
fiasco and it has happily punished guilty cricketers by banning them according
to their wish. Albeit the voices from rest of the country were raised primarily
against BCCI and its premier players the Indian democratic system has clearly pronounced
it as a simple cricketing issue thus keeping all hyper-commercial entertainment
aspects unhampered. Everything has however limped back to the normalcy like many
other unresolved issues except the spot-fixing ‘drama’ or ‘scandal’ or ‘shame’.
Meanwhile, the investigating Justice
Lodha Committee, appointed by BCCI, earlier recommended and empowered by the
Mudgal Committee has come out with its verdict pronouncing certain exemplary
decisions like suspending CSK and Rajasthan Royals for two years from IPL and
banning Gurunath Meyappan and Raj Kundra for life from IPL Cricket. The
allegation is as simple as anything: They both were betting regularly. However
instead of moving into the detail of the report the paper prefers to delve into
the dialectic of "spot" and fixing of it in exchange of huge money. The
dialectic of spot reveals a new political economic layer not just over the
political economy of cricket but the gross political economic structure of the
country.
The Lodha Committee verdict on spot
fixing scandal are nowadays the front page hit in both national and regional
dailies. But the whole incident however stunned the country and the cricketing
world for many other reasons that need to be excavated by new archeological
means.
(a) Firstly,
cricketers are being used to create imaginary spots; others are betting on
these for a hefty exchange value;
(b) Secondly,
it has roots in Mumbai Film industry and the underworld also;
(c) Thirdly,
close associates of the BCCI authority are found involved;
(d) Fourthly,
franchise owners and industrial icons are also involved in spot fixing;
(e) The
main investigator ‘Delhi Police’ albeit claimed to disclose some more names
involved in it, but did such nothing. So investigation and judicial proceedings
continue with the names so far disclosed by the police.
(f) Corporate
pressures mounting to consider spot-fixing or betting legal in India. ‘FICCI urges government to legalize betting
as it can generate substantial income for the state exchequer’.1
(g) Nothing
such happened finally. As said, BCCI has been attributed to have the full
responsibility to probe into the issue despite its credibility was at stake for
many such related issues. Law did not take its own course because Delhi Police
was restrained to move forward with the case and the judiciary has given BCCI
to resolve it within its purview.
The spot-fixing case and its
magnitude had therefore caused a massive hue and cry in the whole country.
Political connection with the case has not been established although political
icons involved in BCCI have not expressed any radical opposition or protest so
far, except putting mass resignation only from BCCI portfolios and chose to
attend the meeting through videoconferencingN2. The Board President N. Srinivasan was albeit forced
to step down for just three months for having his son-in-law involved in it but
journalists were of common opinion that Srinivasan hasn’t lost its control over
BCCI. The situation went exactly in that manner. N. Srinivasan had won uncontested,
even after all hue and cries, the President election to become BCCI President
again. Albeit the democratic functioning has limited its space to think further
on this issue, the archeological or enunciative view rediscovers the whole
fiasco from a parallactic angle.
This is such a darker side of an
institution, here cricketing institution, where the country has witnessed no
bloodshed, nor clash between sects or identities, political ideologies, even
local mafias. The uproar has actually seemed something like spreading of a
concept that haunts everybody, hits few, and influences none. It largely
appears that the fiasco is a mythic signified as common practice as well that the
large population should be aware of and prepare for their current affairs knowledge
about how it was perpetrated, draining out billions of money through various
financial routes pauperizing country’s economic stability.
Financial Scams: the gift of political economic
transformation
People of India have however
experienced number of scams in the last couple of years, as a compulsive contribution
of the political economy of Indian CapitalismN3, where loads of money have been siphoned out either
from common exchequers or in terms of the value of opportunities or through aborted
and fake endeavors that might have cost of billions. The list is quite long and
the amount of money involved in spot-fixing so far calculated or estimated is
also huge as well. Having even such a financial profligacy in every sense of
the term, Indian people have somehow expressed its optimum resilience or better
say tolerance in case of IPL spot fixing scam beyond any specific inferiority
of class inequality, sudden outburst of any anti-incumbent social consciousness
and most importantly beyond upper hand of the ruling ideologies of political
economy and finally beyond the state power. Many philosophers are of common
opinion that when power structures or groups declare conquest or domination over
people and natural growth of society the inevitable outcome is such a fiasco
where the system is defined by series of crises to ultimately corrupt itself
completely.
Particularly, the Spot-Fixing context
remains ever pertinent when the ‘list’ of involved people overflows the
periphery of the cricketing sport and reveals the names of team owners, political
and sporting personalities to finally have knocked the door of the Indian Cricket
Authority, BCCIN4. Noted
Sports Journalist Vijay Lokapally comments,
The tentacles of
corruption spread in all directions and reached the doors of the BCCI. The
Board came under fire from all quarters but unsurprisingly, the artful cricket
officials managed to thwart the aggression mounted by the media.2
This not only reveals the sudden
collapse of political economy of cricketing sport as being quite inadequate to
legitimize the massive dimension of the scam but demands for a new critique toward
a radical alternative to understand the discourse of the fiasco as an oeuvre.
The gradual investigation of Police and detective agencies reveals direct involvement
of not just players, but team officials, franchise owners, Mumbai film stars, relations
of Board Officials, and many others from the money making layer of Indian
population. This is quite interesting to note the very known but complicated
trivia that the exclusively televisual structure IPL shows active participation
of Bollywood stars, and other tycoons of entertainment industries and other
socio-political attachments and the investigative aspects of the scam on the
other hand reveals the 'substructural' connection of that same Indian entertainment
and political control over the IPL show. This structural duality has completed
the cycle of the IPL structure.
Evolution of either shades of Cricket in India: beyond
Production
The ‘darker’ or substructural side
of the history of Indian cricket has an evolutionary root since the elite stardom
and elite scandals in the "developing within the state" phase from 1930s
to 1980s to the ‘Match Fixing’ era of 1990s and finally the ‘Spot Fixing’ in
recent days, which is no less than a noteworthy development of the sport. And the
‘game’ of cricket, on the field, also has a similar but reductionist and slower
evolution from the ‘Royal’ imagery of Test Cricket to the ‘commoners’’ ODIs and
finally the ‘postcommercial’ T20 cricket. One may however argue against the
above categorization but the alternative critique must also have the right to critically
analyze these two parallel growths the cricketing political economy. I remember
here the famous lines of Walter Benjamin,
‘the transformation of
superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than that of substructure,
has taken more than half a century to manifest in all areas of culture the
change in the [present]conditions of production’3.
The game of cricket also has had similar
assumptions toward its contemporary hyper-commercial phase. The face of cricket,
the superstructure of cricket, the manifestation or appearance of cricket, the
symptoms of cricket, are being controlled by non-playing authorities leaving
out the real authenticity of the use value of the cricket that produce real
excellence of the game and exuberance of millions of spectators. But the
authority has always been very busy in sublimating the excellence by creating 'imaginaries'
of exchange value with loads of prize money, massive auction bid value i.e. an
imaginary exchange between player's use value and Franchise's brand value as a
bid for a playerN5 with
loads of capital.
This is also to note that classical
critique has never experienced such an exchange value as the sports were
chiefly controlled by the bourgeois celebrities under colonial and then state
format. All such issues thus have got a natural incubating space in the fast growing
substructural conditions of the political economy of cricketing production. So
the exchange value has always been controlled by the authority's own formulation
and intention on the one hand and here there is no alternative of betterment as
it follows a very unique technique of substitution [capital substitute oeuvre] that
amounts the power of modernity. Finally, it is being substituted by the amount
of pleasure by media's formulation about the game or the Show. Mediation starts
transcending from actuality through its image production technique.
The postcommercial global media
convergence has thus been representing the substructural conditions of
cricketing production on which the imaginary exchange value becomes the rule of
the game far beyond of cricketing excellence where a player of any rank does
not have to perform a big inning to secure his future. Noted Journalist P.
Sainath writes,
‘...in
the IPL you might earn two million dollars throwing your bat around for 30s and
an occasional flaky 50. Or for bowling four overs a few times in a 90-day
season. It's hard to strive for your best when there is so much incentive to do
your worst’4.
There is thus no confusion about
the evolution of the substructural aspects of the game from match-fixing to
spot-fixing because these two substructural forms earn the imaginary of exchange value from the hegemonic or authoritative code
of the cricketing authority. The evolution of the cricketing format from its 5-day
Test to a reductionist T20 format i.e. from ‘Royal space' to the contemporary 'spot’
therefore manifests a structural duality that basically ruled the politics of
the game-show and its increasing routes of commerciality. The ‘looking simple’
history of this transformation would reveal many shades of the same text.
Production-utility metaphor and Image Production in IPL
If the evolution of cricketing
sport from the colonial past has had its origin in the ‘production’ metaphor
and the utility chiefly in the national market,N6 the cricketing spirit and image also has a definite production
evolution with the growth of postindustrial mediation in 1990s toward grand
convergence of mediation in 2000s up to the contemporary cricketing apps. In
this way we have a distinct evolution of cricketing virtuality specially
manifested in IPL compared to any other form of cricket. Surrounding the game
the imaging or virtuality starts mounting in multi-layered real categories
like,
(i)
Micro spaces are used for projecting Advertisement structures both within and
outside of the arena ranging from stumps to every pillar of the stadium; from
helmet-sides to the vests of cheerleaders for telecasting to the larger
audience;
(ii)
Studio-space including ground anchoring including expert commentary becomes a
distinct arena for not just 'Live telecast' but a production engine of
all-round commerciality;
(iii)
Separate Ground Entertainment Bloc for further production of extension of the
Show; Chief Sponsor almost does the monopoly here;
(iv)
Ball-by-ball description on INTERNET sites; These Sites run a different mode of
consumption of information generating a separate mode of business;
(v)
Live Video and Photograph updates including commentary;
(vi)
NET updates in mobiles specially made for smart phones;
(vii)
IPL smart phone games;
(viii)
IPL Mobile Apps.
(ix)
Finally, unlimited audience posts on Social Networking Sites including
embedding all live videos and updates;
Thus the growth of virtual has overtly
extended the cricketing sport toward infinite images or signs. Consequently in
this way the cricketing package in India has surpassed its production utility context
toward an endless virtuality in recent IPL years. The extension mechanism is
being controlled chiefly by the production authority BCCI or the IPL Committee
and its corporate allies. So quite naturally the authority's job now rests to somehow
legitimize all hyper-commercial factors that produce 'images and imaginaries' to
establish the discourse of IPL. From Manoranjan
Ka Baap to India Ka Tewhar, the metanarratives
are not just popular in common sense, but have a new utility value to cover and
legitimize all commercial factors. In this course the cultural extension of
cricketing extravaganza brutally suppresses the so called 'social value' of
cricket which was earlier a symbolic as Gentleman's Game or Aristocrat Sport. So
in between the earlier aristocratic rights of the sport and today's extravaganza
of the same sport common people as audience and the integral part of the
professional sport remain eternal followers either of the state-sponsored power
or of the postcommercial power. The social of the Cricketing Sport is now
really passing through the crisis of oblivion. Don Bradman’s inexplicable 99.96
strike rate in 1940s, Ravi Shastri and Gary Sobers’ six sixers in an over in
first class cricket in 1960s, or Kapil Dev’s 175 knock against Zimbabwe in 1983
World Cup5, Sandip
Patil’s six boundaries in an over against Australia, Sunil Gavaskar’s first
ever 10,000 runs mark in Ahmedabad etc. are all in crisis of deliberate oblivion.
The problem is not with the corporatization as the game of cricket has long
been drawn a corporate outcome since the initial of ODIs in 1970s. The real
problem is therefore with the new liberalization of Cricketing Sport in such
newer formats where the authorities like BCCI get a new taste of liberalization
and the postcommercial extension. The philosophy of BCCI looks like, 'Owning
the Indian Cricket forms not to optimize the game but to maximize the Profit'.
New World Order: Cricketing Liberalization toward a Political
Code
The New World Order was proclaimed
in 1991 with the emergence of unipolar world in terms of political power and the
first match-fixing case was revealed in 1999-2000 in South Africa’s tour in
India. The ruling institutional authorities or governments of many ex-colonized
nations however felt three basic internal social sectors 'needed' to be
globalized to become at par to the Global in popular western sense of the term.
These three major sectors were Industry, Education and Sports. It now appears
that ex-colonial nations expected globalization to provide with three major
aspects of investments. These were new industries, new universities, and new capital
to finance the sporting infrastructure to make it global.
As a colonial power England precisely
the British Empire has been hosting players around the world in its County
Cricket or internal cricket league for many years. Cricketers across playing
nations used to consider a call from a county team as an important aspect of their
career development. The larger purpose of being proud to be playing for an
English County was otherwise earning money. Indian internal cricket format for
exactly the opposite but same dimensional reason never stood up on that
position. The cricketing modernity and coloniality was duly ruled by England in
its dominion and commonwealth states. So these others, being commonwealth
nations with England, were albeit great performers but was never rulers. Even
after winning the World Cup in 1983 the internal situation witnessed no radical
change at all. Sunil Gavaskar (1971-1987) and Kapil Dev (1977-1994) epochs witnessed
traditionally deficient infrastructure where performance was the last word or
solitary means to earn subsistence. The biggest irony is that the Indian
Internal Cricketing Form finally has taken the Global Stride in IPL because this
is nothing but an Internal Cricket League.
So, it was a rise of monetary globalization
or financial liberalization or the liberation of International Finance Capital guided
by the global media liberalization that changed the whole scenario. Loads of
money started infiltrating from global corporate brandsN7. Beyond so called colonial ruse of production and
repression of utility metaphors over common people the whole situation started
getting a revival in terms of consumption of the IPL code. So it was just a
necessity to form a supreme code as a 'show' and not just sport. Even it was
not just the Manoranjan; it was Manoranjan Ka Baap.
IPL was therefore such an
aberrant and a politically planned code. The BCCI while exploiting the
situation to its fullest extent started finding new avenues to sell the cricketing
values for bigger 'signs' of prestige, control, convergence, consistency, profit,
power and political space. The IPL is the finality beyond the colonial definition
of cricketing category that promotes all sign values grow through unlimited mechanical
reproduction in the all genres of popular media. The being of Hockey as national
sport of India, and other popular sports like football trailed far behind not the
cricket but cricketing extravaganza to become a global code. The liberalized
money has had chosen India and specially Indian cricket as a newer destination
of global investment.N8 BCCI
has not had therefore faced any difficulty to get the influx of global
investment. It just continued rediscovering new spaces from real to virtual
domain of communication to sell them in exchange of billions.
The Match Fixing: Still Not Fixing the Imaginaries
Earlier, the first ever Match
fixing case came out in 1999-2000 where Indian Captain Md. Azharuddin, South
African Cricketing Legend Captain Hansie Cronje, Pakistani cricketing icons
Salim Malik, Ataur Rehman, Ajoy Sharma and some other Indian and South African
Cricketers were found guilty and they also committed their involvement in match
fixing before their respective authoritiesN9.
They committed to lose a match against huge amount of money. In 2007 the
unusual death of Bob Woolmer had shaken the cricketing world. Everyone
associated with the game or the 'show' anyhow apprehended the dark cloud of malicious
investment. Before that in 2004 Kenyan Captain Maurice Odumbe was found guilty
in Match fixing. These incidents of match fixing faded out very soon from the
scene. Many Cricket columnists have started writing that the match fixing has
been replaced by spot fixing, which is neither theoretically feasible nor was the
actual sequel. There is no cause and effect relation between these two types of
scams; they are the non-identical twins of the same mother. ‘Spot’ should however
be analyzed in a different manner.
Extension of Cricket commodity: Expansion-Reduction
ambivalence
So the substructural relationship
between investment of capital and the IPL oeuvre, as said earlier, produces innumerable
signs that become the ruling intersubjective exchange in the public sphere. This
exchange is not just arbitrary but in some cases highly regimented too, i.e. the
authoritative code becomes the prime aspect of public sphere discussion or the
Lifeworld. The production of IPL or other Reality shows are meant for such a
huge consumption that resolves the pluralist note of productions but is
destined to a general consumption.
In this situation, however, where
players and central governing authorities of IPL play a double standard by extending
the cricketing commodity toward a new 'hyper-commercial' viability on the one
hand and in this way become a new ideological apparatus too. For both
preemptive conditions they produce sign values of both the 'cricketing commodity'
and the cricketing ideological' as a state or political apparatus'. The nexus
between political personalities and Spot-fixing or IPL perpetrators justifies
the actuality of the ruling power structure. They, while selling the commodity
of cricket [money invested + game], basically exercise the 'signifier' of the
commodity and while captivating people they exercise ideological apparatus with
state power's active assistance and participation as it was evident in the
celebration processes where the state power arbitrated the whole planning as an
apparatus to control its own people or as evident the political nexus. But the
most interesting part of the analysis is that the 'sign' value produced in both
'selling' and 'captivating' aspects is the same and unique too. Now in the
guise of the externality of the 'sign', the sale of the use-value of cricketing
commodity as a signifier formulates an arbitrary exchange value as per the
authority demands or plans to earn can be safely done without having any form
of protest or social unrest. The authorities of cricketing commodity thus place
their control over the imaginary code of exchange value from the beginning. Indian
cricket authority has taken a leading position to control this prime signifier
of cricketing commodity. Journalist Priyalina Basu writes interestingly the
story of BCCI’s road to commercializing Indian cricket,
If we take the example of the BCCI
(Board of Control for Cricket in India), the richest cricket board of the
world, the role of corporate involvement is clear. According to an inter alia
report of the CBI that dealt with match fixing complaints way back in 2000, the
BCCI remained cash-strapped until 1987. But from the time it hosted the
Reliance Cup, in the same year, its fund started to climb. In a single year,
1987-1988, the profit of the BCCI went up from Rs. 5.06 lakh
to Rs. 8.37 crore…The BCCI was indicted by the CBI for starting a
process of commercialization of cricket without any vision. It also criticized
the BCCI for thoughtless increase in the number of One-Day Internationals…Many
veteran cricketers feel that the seeds were sown in the time of Kerry Packer
who initiated the limited-over cricket format and was hugely criticized for
commercialization of the game. They feel, from that time, the cricketers
started to enjoy stardom like that of the film stars and pursued a kind of
lifestyle that they were never accustomed to. With more and more
corporatization of cricket and the buying of TV rights came more money. The
high point of commercialization of cricket was the IPL where the players were
auctioned off in exchange of hefty amount spent by the franchisees and
corporate sponsors.6
And for this reason the ever expanding
or transcending value-adding process of cricketing 'sign' in contrast to the random
reduction of the cricketing 'format' becomes the primary Neoliberal goal to
transform the game into a compact supreme ‘code’. The self-opposing process
started during seventies when the notion of cricketing commerciality was under Later-capitalist
scanner. The primary ‘Reduction’ to limited over cricket was therefore perpetrated
during World Cup in 1975 and 1979 that caused a reduction from ‘days’ to ‘over’
formats.
Since liberalization in early
1990s, the reduction process of physicality of cricketing sport was enhanced to
a massive trimming in both physicality and signified too was transformed to
generate new spaces for commercial revival like in ‘wide’ and ‘no-ball’ etc. up
to today's Decision Review System (DRS) technique. The leg side of the batsman
has almost been sacrificed to the ‘wide’ zone. The side boundaries of the
popping crease are only being used to mark the off-side for both left and right
hand batsmen. Introduction of ‘powerplay’ and 'strategic time-out' concepts have
further reduced the real cricketing contents and, in turn, expanding spaces for
more commercial contents. The more the match gets halted or shrunken the more
time and spaces are generated for the extension of Cricketing commodity.
Are all these aspects the plausible
routes of transformation of a sport from royal game to commoners’ one or the new
political economic condition altogether extending a commodity? The making of
the supreme code beyond the cricketing commodity is the new ruling of the hour.
The IPL code was therefore the new destination or the finality of the cricketing
commercialization in India. This finality is proved to be so powerful that even
the Investigating Commissions could not afford to be critical to the constructional
politics of IPL and its bidding policy and remained limited within probing into
just spot-fixing networks.
So the general critique of the
political economy of both IPL and general evolution of cricketing sport and the
larger 'political economy' as system determines certain stages of development:
(a) Cricket
as a commodity remains always a ‘means’ of earning for both players and
officials. Production and utility-pleasure metaphors are quite active in authority’s
claims. IPL too is a BCCI's unique production claim in terms of not the gaming
options but its extendibility and expendability of the code.
(b)
Secondly, all fetishistic and transcendental
aspects of the IPL commodity immediately produce sign value and invite new and huge
exchange value. This is evident in players' auction bidding, gallery (stadium)
booking, pricing of ticket, ticket auctioning, gallery show items from music to
cheerleader, sexy anchors etc.
(c)
The cricketing commodity therefore naturally turns
into a ‘Sign’ value through exclusive televization ready to be communicated in
the mass sphere infinitely.
(d)
The BCCI authority meanwhile has started
producing unlimited sign-spots for official booking ranging from gallery points
to the remote space of cheerleaders and players too e.g. Helmet sides, Shirt-arms.
(e)
Interestingly, illegal bookings of other parallel
'spots' also have started, where, as par Lodha Committee verdict, Franchise
owners and their allies including many players and officials were betting
regularly.
(f)
So 'Spot Selling' by the Board or 'Spot Fixing'
by the bookies have become ‘produced’ or manifested of the same political economic
transformation toward absolute consumption that both develop sign forms for unimaginable
and arbitrary exchange value.
(g)
As signs originate from the same political
economy of IPL, intersection between "illegal money on IPL spots" and
"authority's direct participation in spot fixing" becomes plausible.
(h)
The production of spot-signs for spot-fixing has
therefore a definite root in the political economy that in turn produces the IPL
code. The production of signs becomes equally authoritative in both legal and
illegal faces of the game. The system on the one hand is confronted with the betting
racket but the top associates of the Board and top brass of the nation are
found involved also on the other in other various ways in leading role in the
fixing.
(i)
The ‘product-means-commodity-sign’ (PMCS) axis
of development of the code certainly encroach the democratic systemic space and
here basically lies the present ‘dialectic’ of the whole fiasco. The democratic
system at first allows its own space in making of the hypercommercial ‘sign’
and the PMCS development, and in turn becomes very proactive on alienating itself
from any fiasco. So the law and order becomes duly applicable to the
perpetrators for spot-fixing, whichever the cricketing authority does not approve.
But its associates are ironically found involved.
(j)
The system thus first takes benefit of owning mediated
signs but alienates itself from other prearranged signs being cropped up from
the very identical system.
(k)
The system therefore not only promotes the
crisis but corrupts the larger political economy itself.
(l)
The system or the establishment i.e. BCCI basically
controls the condition of production of such 'signs' of dismay.
(m) The
system has already corrupted the political economy by producing imaginary signs
much before the outburst (symptoms) would corrupt the society (superstructure).
IPL: Authority owns the code to extend infinitely
Indian Premier (Cricket) League,
as a new supreme code, endorses the political economy of code of all real and
virtual authenticities to create a series of new signs toward an unbelievably
extended televised game. The semiotic of IPL has however a definite history of
inception controversy when Indian Cricket League or ICL was planned and
organized by the Essel Corporation owned by media tycoon Subhas Chandra and chiefly
mentored by Indian Cricketing legend Kapil Dev. The tournament did everything
from hiring players with a big 'bid [exchange] value' to organize the game
shows to establish the new cricketing format with a bang. We would have made
critique of this version of political economy if not the BCCI frowned upon ICL
by banning it outright. The BCCI banished ICL in its every possible aspect. The
Indian Central Government however did not initiate any positive step to end the
controversy. BCCI, the cricketing system of India finally had a natural win.
ICL was halted in the same fixing controversy; participating players were however
still facing wrath of BCCI. The ICL story therefore ended in smoke. In this way
BCCI has had earned all
(i)
Nationalist codes of the Cricketing game;
(ii)
'Right to autonomy' code as a Chief Cricket Controlling Body;
(iii)
Right to formulate even a Private game show; as this is a private body, free
from any public control;
(iv)
Right to banish any parallel growth in Indian Territory; it is not in constitutional
provision otherwise ICL could not have ever launched;
(v)
A natural public or social consent to accept BCCI as the central leading body
to control Cricketing show in India.
The BCCI was eventually then
about to start its own new grandeur of cricketing bash “New Father of
Cricketing Entertainment” from ‘Manoranjan Ka Baap’ and something more than ICL.
The ceremonial inception of IPL had thus exceeded that of ICL signified albeit in
the same political economic condition. The remaining truth of ICL was that it
had shown the plausibility of an independent route of organizing an event code
other than BCCI and which was constitutionally not outlawed. But BCCI by banning
ICL and its players not only tried to snatch the code but did everything possible
to win it. It is therefore impossible to believe that the ‘father of
entertainment’ would continue producing a continuum of cricketing game what people
witnessed from Don Bradman to today's Sachin-Saurav-Dravid-Laxman combination. Former
cricketers are being arbitrarily used as quite common sign forms according to
their availability or any other unknown factor having only differential value
among them.
The IPL signifier thus produces
the game show and the use value of the show is expanded beyond profit in terms
of its commutation rather submission against the hefty exchange value. ‘The sign no longer designates anything at
all. It approaches in its truth its structural limit which is to refer back
only to other signs’ (Baudrillard: The Mirror of Production, 1975).
Readers, please note the transformation from ICL to IPL also in this context.
The BCCI has sold all such generated ‘spot’ to the giant corporations through
either auction-bidding or preferred selection method, therefore allowed or
approved the real ruse of capital. A typical monopoly capital syndrome was then
all set to rule the code.
According to Jean Baudrillard
‘there can be no internal contradiction
endangering the system of monopoly capital because, as long as it controls the
code, consumption can be infinitely extended. There is no referent against
which to define a finitude of needs because the code is its own referent and
there is end to the consumption of code. As long as the code is dismantled,
there will be no difficulty for the system in getting its workers to produce’12.
Here anyone can notice that
BCCI with its monopoly capital strength has established its control over not
just cricketing production but over the cricketing code. It can therefore be
extended infinitely and in its all consecutive editions the Indian population
has noticed the immeasurable extension of the code, or better say hegemonic
code through generating infinite sign spots.
Sign of cricket widens difference from the game of cricket:
one signifier overrules another
What then the T20 game is up to
in a ‘reduced’ discourse? T20 format itself is a reduced version of the game conceptualized
by the authority as a new syntax or signified of the time compared to the
earlier ODI format i.e. One Day International matches. The new syntax commonly
follows the same ‘production-means-commodity-sign’ axis. IPL product turns into
commodity in the global market that extends itself by producing sign-values to establish
the meaning conditions. All signs produced further from the IPL commodity legitimize
the supreme code. These signs are the revival of all cricketing infrastructure
for IPL code: IPL Gallery including the audience; IPL studio; IPL app; extensions
of players' outfit in popular brand outlets; Franchises' brand extension in
popular reality shows; extension of Bollywood in IPL i.e. Film promotions on
IPL ground; producing newer spots for official selling etc. The same IPL authority
now establishes its ruling/control over the signifier of the commodity to extend
its ruling by extending the market limit in the vast audience psyche also. In
this way the authority rules over the signified, the whole IPL code or concept
or the commodity immediately turns into the signifier with huge production
potential to extend IPL show. But the very signifiers of IPL code suppress the display
or the signifier of the game of excellence. The latter has no option but to be
associated somehow with the new power superstructure on authority’s credit.
Journalist Harish Khare has
written a feature in The Hindu on the
truth about T20 quoting a recently made ad-commercial. The report
says:
In the build-up to the
Championship Trophy T20 cricket series early this year, the sponsor, a soft
drinks company, unveiled an interesting advertisement campaign, which showed an
ill-mannered Bollywood actor making a virtue of being rude and impertinently
ad-libbing the catchline: “Boss, ye T20 cricket hai; na tameez se khela jata
hai, na tameez se dheka jata hai (This is T20 cricket; it is neither played nor
watched with decorum).” This charming invitation to forget our manners and
etiquette is an extraordinary in-your-face celebration of the new cultural mood
of loudmouthedness, a deliberate disdain towards obligations of dignity and
decency. (The Hindu, Harish Khare).7
The report clearly demonstrates the
being of T20 format as a central code, or a central authoritative code
formulated to rule or monopoly over not only the cricketing game but all sign
forms beyond the game. The Indian cricket authority, BCCI has however established
full control over both signifiers beyond the game in a new political economy of
sign beyond common understanding of the issue. BCCI has thus started spotting
new sign forms to fix it for sale in billions. Journalist P. Sainath interestingly
recoded BCCI as ‘Billionaires Control
Cricket in India’8. The
whole IPL has turned into 'Spots' over Cricketing Excellence.
The new signifiers therefore evolve
only from the ‘encroached spots’. From Bat to wicket, helmets, pitch, bowler’s
run-up point, boundary rope and fence, gallery wall, cheerleaders’ mini
outfits, commentary box, commentators’ uniforms, exclusive television channel,
presentation studio and screen spaces are booked by the BCCI. Now from the
exclusive television channel an infinite possibility of imaginary sign forms is
being framed up and primate[d] up to wherever the camera penetrates its lens.
Technology specially communication technology, as a means or chief condition of
production, is being used in so much monolithic manner that leaves a very
limited space for alternative, or alternative use of the means. The situation
reminds Marshall McLuhan’s immortal code ‘medium is a message’. So the IPL
syntax becomes itself a medium and a supreme hegemonic code to communicate a huge
mass audience largely considered insipid or passively proactive to mediated
sign forms.
IPL-Spot: A New Political Economy
Spot Fixing on the other hand is
being perpetrated with those differentiable ‘signs’ which the authority albeit does
not disown officially but also not pronounced for official sale, so hardly takes
any action or launch a cricketing movement against it as it exploits the same
political economic [value] system of the IPL code. Making it thus a mere crime
by law is also a deliberate effort of the authority to alienate itself when the
scam hits the game.
BCCI has thus established its
control over all sign forms of the cricketing commodity. They bid for auctions,
they sell everything from space to players, they abandon any player and any
space for they think non-performing or non-returning, they create new space,
new franchises, new apparatuses i.e. from T-Shirts to wrist bands to
cheerleaders' outfits except performances which is a least preferred area in
IPL.
P. Sainath rightly argues that,
coring
30s and 40s (even 20s) at a quick clip is pretty okay in the Indian Premier
League. That's what our guys in Australia are still doing. Consider that in the
IPL you might earn two million dollars throwing your bat around for 30s and an
occasional flaky 50. Or for bowling four overs a few times in a 90-day season.
It's hard to strive for your best when there is so much incentive to do your
worst. The same body, the BCCI, presides over both private (IPL) and national
cricket. It enables huge moneys to be made by one. And strangles the golden
goose that is the other. The problem is not that our ‘boys' have been
playing too much cricket.
It's that they haven't been playing cricket. They've been playing IPL T20,
where focus, concentration, technique and staying power count for little. And
it's showing.9
BCCI also owns its own spots and mediational
spaces by giving exclusive right to a particular media channel. The channel is
doing everything under BCCI jurisdiction specially projecting and selling every
second of transmission, wherever the space can be generated sometimes even beyond
all traditional senses of availability. And most interestingly all underworld
bookies are using the same exclusive Televisual spaces and contents adding some
extra value category infiltrating into the gaming system. P.Sainath argues
here,
In
India, some of the greatest of our greats have not just refrained from
criticism but vociferously defended IPL on countless television programmes. The
co-opting power of the BCCI-IPL money machine is wondrous. Now and then, a
little conflict-of-interest blip appears. Like commentators being paid crores
by the BCCI — who are then unlikely to criticise its golden child. It is
equally unlikely that media fed with crores of ad revenue will speak up either.
Any other institution seeing half the scams and conflict of interest that the
BCCI-IPL has, would long ago have drawn sharp media scrutiny. But whatever
emerges does so when the IT or ED departments get active, not the media. There
are also too many journalists co-opted into the IPL network, unable to look at
it critically.10
They generate screen spaces while
mediating skeletal screening of the actual cricketing action for earning
billions of dollars. They even use the spaces from field to screen for leading
sponsors. They create a new signification system over the existing system of
controlling the whole T20 package to outcast the cricketing value.
Quoting Priyalina Basu may substantiate
the above analysis,
Many
veteran cricketers feel that the seeds were sown in the time of Kerry Packer
who initiated the limited-over cricket format and was hugely criticized for commercialization
of the game. They feel that that from that time, the cricketers started to
enjoy stardom like that of the film stars and pursued a kind of lifestyle that
they were never accustomed to. With more and more corporatization of cricket
and the buying of TV rights came more money. The high point of
commercialization of cricket was the IPL where the players were auctioned off
in exchange of hefty amount spent by the franchisees and corporate sponsors.11
Besides that, the IPL authority,
through its exclusive media channel, incessantly organizes open audience poll on
various sloppy and speculative questions to earn more revenues. These are like:
‘Which team won the previous match?’ ‘Who will be winning the match today?’ ‘Which
team will be the IPL champion this time?’ ‘Who is the better bowler today?’ and
the list is endless. In this process the whole IPL code becomes a real package where
all signifiers are simulated beyond natural or common understanding. There is
at this moment no such spot is remained vacant, unlooked, unnoticed,
unsponsored, unadvertised or unbranded. These are all 'signs' that have an
assorted code value which further attract more and more finance to be invested with
a high exchange value.
Spots are all structured symptoms: toward a new political
economy of signification
Finally, amid such unbelievable
extension of the hegemonic authoritative codification of IPL, the particular sixth
edition of IPL witnessed a spot fixing scandal, as an outburst that had shaken
the superstructure. The investigation categorically revealed that spot fixing
was perpetrated in its earlier editions also. For, the spot fixing activity does
not affect the whole game it is to be considered separately from any gross consideration
like the earlier match fixing efforts. A particular ‘over’ or a specific
delivery or an individual’s special performativity or prefixed shot can be
placed as spot for betting. The act thus immediately turns into a 'sign' structure
to be communicated as its signifier has earlier planned to produce such a dramatic
signified. Zee News defines ‘spot’ as the same signified of the earlier consent
or agreement 'signifier',
Spot-fixing involves a player agreeing to perform to order by
pre-arrangement. For example, a bowler might deliberately bowl consecutive
wides in his second over or a batsman could make sure he does not reach double
figures. Twenty20 cricket is particularly susceptible because so much happens
so quickly that individual performances can soon be forgotten or dismissed as
inconsequentia.12
Now the same analysis can however
be done for an official spot set by BCCI for auctioning and telecasting because
both desperately use the same capital invested in IPL from outside the system. The
argument for these spots being official or approved by the authority can hardly
establish anything to oppose the idea that these are the same imaginaries having
genealogy in the same political economy and equally unknown to public N10. The temporality of
these spots being exchanged to any company by a huge value is formulated by the
authority quite subjectively. It is something like telling about atheist
contents in quite religious forms.
The former cricketer Arun Lal
laments saying,
Spot fixing is
widespread in Indian cricket at large. Now that someone like Sreesanth has been
accused of this menace, it is clear that it is no longer a peripheral issue…
Everyone knows someone who bets in cricket - that's all fun and games. But
fixing a match, compromising an over with "approved" codes - this is
a new low. There are many who believe that betting should be legalized. But
that is not the solution given the vast black money economy.13
The statement justifies
the contribution of political economy that creates both legal and illegal spot
signs having differential relationship eitherN11. It may be easy to legitimize the monopoly of the underworld
bookies in spot fixing but it is also easy to understand that the Indian cricketing
authority is monopolizing the code of cricketing signs that can be extended to
unlimited imaginary of sign forms.
Wikipedia gives an interesting
definition of Spot Fixing:
'Spot-fixing' refers to
illegal activity in a sport where a specific part of a game is fixed. Examples
include something as minor as timing a no ball or wide delivery in cricket.
Spot-fixing attempts to defraud bookmakers illegally by means of a player
agreeing to perform to order by pre-arrangement. As such spot-fixing differs
from match fixing, where a whole match is fixed, or point shaving, a specific
type of match fixing in which corrupt players (or officials) attempt to limit
the margin of victory of the favoured team. Spot-fixing is more difficult to
detect than match fixing or point shaving.14
Spots are therefore imaginaries 'formulated
only to be fixed' [i.e. produced to be consumed] by an imaginary exchange
value. Through the same auction where only the signifiers approach, called,
bids instead of bets, i.e. the same symptoms or appearances in the superstructure
both of which are never authentic except the concerned authority’s claim. So
both ‘legal’ bids and ‘illegal’ bets are the products of the same system of the
political economy. Players are primarily treated as commodity and then appear
in sign forms in further commercial productions. And the signifiers become self
referent where the auction, bidding and buying processes remain in darkness
making public or mass completely insipid. P. Sainath continues arguing,
Your
top cricketing icons are reduced to assets in the balance sheets of corporates.
The “bring-us-their-heads” humiliation that is in store for the team will
actually hijack the debate from why things went wrong. The rants will be all
about the players and their appalling performance. Maybe even a few yowls at
the selectors. But little about how IPL has savaged Indian cricket and harmed
the game around the world.15
Moreover the auction of players considers
only the focused performance of players specially in T20 format not like what
an Internal Cricket League is supposed to be the grooming platform for young
cricketers. Both legal and illegal arrangements have the same genealogical womb
which the production and utility metaphors and all authority's grand statements
are deliberately trying to suppress. Quoting Richard Smith in this context,
All…metanarratives, ‘ depth models’ ,
Grand Theories, ‘ hermeneutics of suspicion’ , specular watchtowers, and ways
of reading the world that claim to be able to dig-out the truth: essence behind
appearance; latent (unconscious desire) behind manifest (symptom); authentic
behind inauthentic; production beneath superstructure; relations of force or
power beneath the ideological or normative shell; signified behind signifier—in
short, all ‘ realities’ laid bare by an interpretative hermeneutic—have a
certain perimeter.16
The spot fixing and IPL need therefore
such interpretative hermeneutic to decode the actual critique of the political
economy. And the critique would further reveal an absolute fetishism toward
symptoms thus grows along with these new sign spots. Noted Philosopher Slavoj
Zizek argues while interpreting commodity and dreams that
the secret to be
unveiled through analysis is not the content hidden by the form (the form of commodities
and the form of dreams) but, on the contrary, the secret of the form itself…the
real problem is not to penetrate to the ‘hidden kernel’ of the commodity - the
determination of its value by the quantity of the work consumed in its
production – but to explain why work assumed the form of value of a commodity,
why it can affirm its social character only in the commodity form of its
product.17
So to unveil the value form of a
commodity is quite similar to unveil the sign form of commodity and the secret
procedure of the affirmation i.e. signifier or the social character of the
commodity. And the secret of the form or structure or the signifier of the
commodity is formulated by the power what Richard Smith argued above about that
very signifier that suppresses the signified. For generating new spots both by
the authority and by the illegal bookies a pervasive power that assumes the
form of value i.e. signifier of the value and also gives its social character.
So basically the critique of the political economy is completed and a new
political economy is to be drawn.
Epilogue: New Radical Space needed to save cricket
The ‘spot fixing’ therefore is
considered as a criminal act what the authority spells so that it can initiate
proceedings even after its close associates are found actively involved in
earning loads of money. After Lodha Committee report people are now demanding
CBI probe on not just Spot Fixing case but the whole IPL scam. So the authority
in spite of being under suspicion largely in all related symptomatic acts now
is to decide the punitive measure against perpetrators. Popular news channels
are of opinion that there would be a difference of opinion between Governing
Council of IPL and BCCI on the further proceeding in this issue. Any possibility
of broader reaction however becomes implausible when it comes to the point of mass
action and mass response as the political economy of the system authority has
already taken its stance to control the social action. Indian Governments too
are not going to disturb the cricket control system as par neoliberal agenda. So
the political economic structures become unaffected and the cricketing
extravaganza will continue to generate revenues from the auction capital,
public capital, invested capital, and commuters' money.
Nevertheless 'spot fixing' corrupts
the cricketing sport both from within and outside the BCCI system so far as the
investigations reveal the scandal. Anyone therefore can be involved in such a corruption
of spot fixing. The situation therefore comes like what BCCI does not approve
or recognize is punishable by law and that is the rule of the whole game despite
it faces huge criticisms from all over the country. Both BCCI and spot bookies share
the same systemic space to generate infinite spots to either sell or fix. According
to a survey conducted by Hindustan Times, 54% of the total Indian population
has expressed no confidence on any form of authoritative action to dig-out the
truth. Opinions are fragmented on whether IPL should be banned. We therefore desperately
need a radical space in the political economy to raise the voice against such a
huge money laundering or the draining of capital and have to ensure that here
the public action would not be hijacked again by the billionaires. But that
space at this moment seems to be a chimera to attain. P. Sainath albeit prescribes
the alternative by reviving the domestic cricket but the IPL code affects both
domestic cricket, as it projects itself as a domestic cricketing form, and also
international cricket as international cricketers now prefer to play in IPL
than to represent their national team. So a new critique of the political
economy needs to be drawn to establish a radically alternative space otherwise the
authority would continue generating newer spaces to sell out the cricket and
bookies would continue fixing newer spots using the same space in the political
economy.
Journalist Suresh Menon also however urges for a new political economy
saying that ‘there are many areas to
clean up, therefore. The BCCI, The IPL Cricket itself. The possibility of
corruption having seeped down to the Ranji and lower levels is high. Each
requires a new approach, a different emphasis’18. The new critique of the political economy of the sign-space
must oppose such an extension of the Cricketing Commodity.
Notes:
N1: Three cricketers
of Rajasthan Royals were found guilty in spot-fixing. They were S. Sreeshanth,
Ankit Chavan and Ajit Chandila. The Delhi police while interrogating these
three cricketers found many other people involved in this racket. Subsequently
Delhi police arrested film star Bindu Dara Singh, Chennai Super Kings Owner G.
Meiyappan a.k.a. the son-in-law of BCCI President N. Srinivasan and also called
Rajasthan Royals owner Raj Kundra for interrogation.
N2: Political icons
like Arun Jaitley, Anurag Thakur and Rajeev Shukla resigned from their
respective portfolios but remained in BCCI as they chose to attend BCCI meeting
through videoconferencing to keep themselves away. Political oppositions however
expressed their apprehension for such steps terming it a charade (Vijay Lokapally: Indian Cricket in Deep
Crisis, Frontline, 28th June, 2013).
N3: Indian Political
Economy has had witnessed number of financial scams for last two decades of
economic and financial liberalization that have siphoned out billions of money
from public exchequer. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Telgi-scam-worth-just-Rs-171-cr/articleshow/2162794.cms
shows the list of hundreds of scams pushed Indian economy back to a despair.
N4: The spot fixing
scandal has spread its roots in BCCI associates also. From Mumbai film stars to
franchise owners are so far found involved in betting.
N5: Players are being
auctioned in an open format organized by BCCI to get imaginary bid from
franchises. One can follow the link http://www.espncricinfo.com/indian-premier-league-2013/content/story/603194.html
N6: BCCI not even
being a public organization controls Indian cricket on behalf of the nation. It
builds national squad and earns loads of money from the cricketing sport. As
the controller of all cricketing aspects BCCI has become the supreme producer
of Indian cricket. http://www.bcci.tv/bcci/bccitv/index/history
. The BCCI history shows how it controlled the whole Indian cricketing code by
bagging the history of even pre-colonial India when British sailors were playing
cricket for diversion and entertainment since 1721.
N7: Mostly big US Brands
started investing in Indian soil. The new corporate incumbents preferred new
codes to invest rather than investing in traditional infrastructure. They were
never interested in investing Indian internal cricketing spaces. So they wanted
a new political economy altogether to safeguard their money.
N8: Quoting Corporate
Strategist Kenichi Ohmae, ‘Investment is no longer geographically constrained
(in liberalization era). Now wherever you sit in the world, if the opportunity
is attractive, the money will come in. And it will be, for the most part,
private money. Again, ten years ago, the flow of cross border funds was
primarily from government to government or from multilateral lending agency to
government…because most of the money now moving across borders is private,
governments do not have to be involved at either end. All that matters is the
quality of the investment opportunity. The money will go where the good
opportunities are…the western firms now moving, say, into parts of China and
India are there because that is where future lies, not because the host
government has suddenly dangled a carrot in front of their nose’. Kenichi Ohmae: The End of The Nation States,
Herper Collins, 1996.
N9: The first ever
Match-Fixing scandal hit cricketing sport where Indian Captain Md. Azharuddin,
South African Cricket legend Hansie Cronje and some others were found guilty in
fixing the match. Manoj Madhavan of www.livemint.com
in his report has stated the match fixing scandal in detail.
N10: BCCI is not at
all a constitutional body nor does it come under RTI act. “In a note dated
14/12/2011 submitted by the Union Ministry of Sports before the Central Information
Commission, the government wanted BCCI to be a public authority and come under
the RTI Act. Given the sheer mockery of the Board meeting in Chennai, it is
high time the Union government, through an ordinance, took over BCCI affairs
and safeguards the money that is unsafe in the hands of a few selfish
individuals…” (Kirti Azad, MP and former
Cricketer, in Vijay Lokapally, Indian Cricket in Deep Crisis, Frontline, 28th
June, 2013).
Photograph/Graphics Source:
(1) The
Hindustan Times.
References:
(1) V.
Venkatesan: Corporate push to make betting legal; Frontline, 28th
June, 2013;
(2) Vijay
Lokapally: Indian Cricket in deep crisis, Frontline, Cover Story, 28th
June, 2013;
(3) Walter
Benjamin: The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1935;
(4) P.
Sainath: BCCI: Billionaires Control Cricket in India; The Hindu, 17th
January, 2012;
(5) Shayan
Acharya: Thirty years on, Kapil’s 175 remains ‘not out’, Times of India, 18th
June, 2013;
(6) Priyalina
Basu: Cricket: Greed overcomes sport, Business Economics;
(7) Harish
Khare: T20 politics has run its course, The Hindu, 12th December,
2012;
(8) P.
Sainath: BCCI: Billionaires Control Cricket in India; The Hindu, 17th
January, 2012;
(9) Ibid.
(10)Ibid.
(11)Priyalina
Basu: Cricket: Greed overcomes sport, Business Economics;
(12)Zeenews.com:
What is Spot-fixing; 31st august, 2010;
(13)Priyanka
Sharma: Spot fixing is
widespread in Indian cricket: Arun Lal; Business standard, 29th May,
2013;
(14)Wikipedia:
Spot fixing;
(15)P.
Sainath: BCCI: Billionaires Control Cricket in India; The Hindu, 17th
January, 2012;
(16)Richard
Smith: Exploring Post-Marxist Theory: A Reading of Jean Baudrillard; Department
of Geography, University of Leicester;
(17)Slavoj
Zizek: How did Marx invent the symptom? In The Sublime Object of Ideology;
(18)Suresh
Menon: The games they play; Frontline, 28th June, 2013.
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