IPL T(rickery)20

IPL has become a spectacle more than anyone had ever expected it to be. It has become one single source of entertainment for most people in the evening after the grueling work for the day. I am sure many people are going to miss IPL terribly after June 1. I am not going to talk about the success story of IPL, but rather a very interesting speculation that might raise few interesting questions regarding the integrity of the tournament.

The most colorful and the most fancy cricket tournament ever is being valued around 1bn$(4000 Crore Rs). More than that we all know an equal or even more money is involved in betting for the tournament. Also conveniently IPL does not come under the ICC and hence they don't have to follow any of the betting rules that ICC has imposed. It directly comes under BCCI and we all know that BCCI is after only one thing,
Developing cricket in India,
provide infrastructure to the rural India and tap the talents of the future...
I was just kidding :) ..

BCCI's only agenda is to make money.
BCCI is the single biggest gainer from the IPL after the bookies. Since the franchises are ready to pay what the BCCI wants, it looks like BCCI has relaxed all the betting laws that are in place.

Betting in sport is fine, it has been happening from a very long time. It becomes a crime when you approach a team member and influence the course of the game for your financial gain. If you have been following the IPL from the beginning, then you would realise that when the teams were purchased, Hyderabad was the strongest team in the league and Rajasthan Royals were the weakest.

Before going into that, there are so many bet that you can place for a match. they are,

• who wins the tournament, who are the last 4?
• who wins the toss, who wins the match, man of the matchmaximum 6's, maximum 4's, maximum dot(I am not kidding), maximum wide, no balls
• whether Sreesanth gets slapped in a match??
• Who slaps Sreesanth... (lol)
• Even who farts the most in the dressing room.. (well the last one I exaggerated a bit, but the rest are all valid bets)

When the tournament started the odds on Rajasthan Royals(RR) was like 10-1(i.e. if you pay 1 re if Rajasthan wins, then you get 10rs from the bookie, i.e the prob that RR will win is 1/11), similarly the odds on Hyderabad and the likes of Chennai would have been very high(2-1, 3-2 etc). I am not too sure how this entire system works. It's like you place a bet with the bookmaker/bookie by paying the amount and also the brokerage. Bookie's are very intelligent people and have strong probability logic behind all the odds that they offer. So whatever be the outcome, they earn money out of it.(just like a lottery agency, it always makes money)

So the likes of UB baron (sorry can't say Ma***a) and other heavyweights can bet heavily on RR and rig the entire tournament to multiply their money. That is exactly what has happened here. I will give some instances and it would be hard not to believe that the entire IPL was fixed beforehand.

I am writing this blog on 27th-May two days before semifinal of IPL. I am going to give some predictions as to how the IPL is headed in the last week and if they somehow come true, then it's not that I am having some extra sensory perception but, it's because I realised the entire trick just before the end of the IPL.

Mumbai hosts the semifinal and the final, so it has to definitely get into the semifinal stage. But after the first 4 matches everyone thought it's going to end up last, but alas it did not happen. They won miraculously 6 matches in a row. I don't think slapping Sreesanth brought the good omen to the Mumbai team.

RR started off very poor, were mauled at the hands of Delhi. But later there was nothing to stop them?? Why?? Someone wanted to odds to be still lowered for RR so that they can bet heavily on them..

Chennai is the classic case of a bookie's loser. It started out fantastically and no doubt everyone would have better heavily on Chennai (By everyone I refer to the people who don't have the power to influence the course of the match, poor ppl who bet and count on something that is non-existent-- fate) so the only way bookies are going to make money is to make Chennai not reach semifinal. In order to do that, they lost against Bangalore (come on, I can lead a team to win against Bangalore). So the only outcome from the next match is Chennai is going to lose against Hyderabad and earn the bookies a lot.

Also Bangalore which as a team is the weakest team performed superbly in the last 2 matches against Chennai and Hyderabad. The logic is simple, a weak team if it wins then it rains money for the bookmakers. End of the day you can have only one team to win and that team is already decided. But you can also make a lot of money by making a team lose continuously and then make them win a match when the odds have been so low for them to win. This is what has happened here. In the same lines, I expect hyderabad to win against Chennai in the last game and thereby making double bonus for the bookies.

Here are few more predictions that I have for the rest of the tournament, Delhi is going to win against Mohali and reach the finals.. Mumbai will win against RR to reach the finals and is going to win the cup.. I may be totally wrong, may be I am giving the predictions of some crazy bookie, or some wild imagination that has gripped me due to lack of any work at work place, but the point is that we are glued to some sport that is not even being held in the right sense of sport.

There have been instance of slapping, arguing and all sort of nonsense happening. Even street cricket is more orderly. Why do we ever need cheerleaders for games (I do like them, but then that does not make them a necessity). Is IPL trying to compensate for the lack of "legal" strip-clubs in the country?

End of the day all I want to ask is "Is all the money and time that we invest in it is all worth it??"I paid 550rs for a match between Bangalore Vs Hyderabad. Damn even the cheerleaders were disappointing on that day. Please treat this post as a frustration from a man who has been robbed of 500Rs(the match was worth for 50rs :D )

All that I had written is in electronic form and has not legal validity. Even the facts that I had presented may not be entirely true. But hope there is at least some amount of truth in it. All this never struck my brain until my roomie mentioned about the certain speculation and it really inspired me to write this piece of "whatever". Thanks Rk... :)