India’s been responsible for producing some brilliant sports persons through the decades. There have great athletes such as PT Usha, Dhyan Chand, Milkha Singh, Shiny Abraham, and Anju Bobby George. There have been exemplary cricketers sent out in batches from under able Indian coaches such as Sachin Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Azharuddin, Vijay Hazare, Rahul Dravid and M S Dhoni to name a few. However with the recent rise in cases against Indian sports persons, tainting them have led to a murky image for the sports industry in India. Here is looking at some incidences that led to the downfall of some able and promising cricketers.
‘MONKEY-GATE’
‘MonkeyGate’ as the world calls it, is at the top of our list. Hailed as one of Crickets most shameful incidents, this occurred during the India-Australia Test Series of 2007. Responsible for deeply scarring the career of Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds, this racial incident was laced with loopholes which showed what grave misunderstandings can lead to.
After Harbhajan Singh and Symonds had an altercation on the field, it resulted in the former accusing Singh of racial abuse, with Singh being charged with a Level 3 offense of racially abusing Symonds by calling the Australian— of Caribbean descent—a “monkey”. This further escalated when the Umpire reportedly slapped Singh for his misconduct. It was later proven that Singh had infact used a hindi expletive sounding similar to ‘monkey’and no racial abuse was involved. After this incident Andrew Symonds stepped away from the limelight and the legendary cricketers career lost significance.
INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE 2012
The first big scandal involving the Indian Premier League in 2012 led to the banning of 5 cricket players and brought to light the murky underbelly of cricket, betting and spot-fixing. When India TV reporters Jamshed Khan and Sushant Pathak performed a sting operation, started in April 2011, to uncover the spot-fixing taking place, a sting of illegal cricketing activities were uncovered. A life ban from cricketing was placed on Deccan Chargers player TP Sudhindra, five year ban of King’s XI Punjab’s Shalabh Srivastav and one year bans on Mohnish Mishra and Amit Yadav of Pune Warriors and KXIP respectively. The BCCI expressed their disappointment and anger over these activities and their handling of the players severely was proof of this.
INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE 2013
The BCCI’s threat was not taken too seriously and 2013 saw much furore when another match-fixing and betting scandal involving the Indian Premier League, its authorities and the players came to light. IPL players Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan were arrested on account of being involved in spot-fixing. Big-wigs such as BCCI Chief N Srinivasan’s son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, Raj Kundra and Vindu Dara Singh were involved. When the bodies investigating the scandals declared their verdict Raj Kundra was banned from cricketing activities for life, Sreesanth was relesead on lack of evidence and the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act charges was dropped as well.
