Former Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman Lalit Modi made a serious accusation against former BCCI president N Srinivasan, saying that he not only fixed auctions during the IPL for his team Chennai Super Kings, but also put Chennai umpires during CSK matches.
Speaking to Raj Shamani on his YouTube show ‘Figuring Out,’ Lalit made an explosive claim that Srinivasan, who was then the BCCI secretary, was not quite in favour of IPL, and when he went against him, the latter started to fix CSK matches during the season by putting umpires from Chennai.
“He (N Srinivasan) didn’t like IPL; he didn’t think IPL will work but when it started to work everybody got the bandwagon. He was member and secretary of the board also so he was the biggest adversary of mine. I went up against him, so he did many things, umpire fixing, he said, ‘I did it’, Lalit said.
“I accused him for it. He would change the umpire and I didn’t think two things about it. But then I realized he is putting Chennai umpire in Chennai games, it’s an issue for me. That’s called fixing so when I tried to expose those, he went totally against me,” he added.
‘Every team was told to not bid for Flintoff’
Modi further accused Srinivasan of fixing IPL auction so that he could acquire England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff ahead of the 2009 season. Hence, a message was sent to each of the other franchises to not bid for the player.
“Take out everything auction ringing, this ringing, I gave Flintoff to Srinivasan. Yes, we did. No doubt about it, every team knew about it. Srinivasan wasn’t going to let IPL happen. He was a thorn in our bush. Yes, we told everybody not to bid for [Andrew] Flintoff,” he said.
“Yes, that I did because Srinivasan said I want Flintoff. But when you are trying to do an event like IPL and I did it single-handedly, you need to remove every thorn, what is bigger for the game. Every player is only for three months,” Modi added.
2013 IPL fixing scandal
Chennai Super Kings had found themselves in the midst of a major spot-fixing scandal in 2013, for which Gurunath Meiyappan, a top official of the franchise and son-in-law of the Srinivasan, was arrested on charges of cheating, forgery and fraud. Police investigation had revealed that Gurunath was in constant telephonic contact with actor Virender “Vindoo” Dara Singh, who also was arrested for alleged contact with bookies. Vindoo was also frequently spotted in CSK box during IPL matches.
He was later banned for life from any involvement in cricket matches by the RM Lodha committee, who also suspended India Cements and Jaipur IPL, the owners of the Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals teams, for a period of two years. CSK hence did not play the IPL for the seasons 2016 and 2017.
