Indian Premier League chiefs were yesterday defending themselves against government charges that the lucrative Twenty20 event in South Africa was “encouraging gambling and betting.”
Indian Sports Minister Manohar Singh Gill lashed out at an IPL mobile phone SMS contest in which participants win cash prizes for correctly guessing the sequence of runs scored in the subsequent over of the match.
“I see the commercial use of cricket for business gains that is going on,” Gill, a former federal chief election commissioner, said in a statement. “I am concerned about the latest venture of encouraging viewers to make ball-by-ball predictions of runs scored for economic gain in the shape of cash prizes. This is viewed as openly encouraging gambling and betting which official bodies do not resort to, even in countries where betting is legal — all this to make money and enlarge their TV viewership base.”
The IPL downplayed the sports minister’s charges.
“A lot of effort has gone into this concept [SMS contest] and into making this possible,” IPL commissioner Lalit Modi was quoted as saying in South Africa by the Times of India. “It’s a valid point [made by Gill]. But the margin of something like that happening is one in a million. If this game works, fine. If not, then we will leave it aside.”
Meanwhile, an unbeaten half-century from Subramanium Badrinath propelled the Chennai Super Kings to a seven-wicket win over the Rajasthan Royals and put them top of the IPL on Saturday.
After Rajasthan had posted 140 for seven, Chennai strolled to 141 for three as they took a one-point lead over the Delhi Daredevils in the standings.
The right-handed Badrinath scored 59 not out and shared a third-wicket stand of 89 runs with Matthew Hayden, before the Australian was stumped off the bowling of Shane Warne.
Hayden, the tournament’s leading run-scorer, departed for 48 off 44 balls and fittingly it was Badrinath who scored the winning runs with 10 balls to spare.
Rajasthan’s innings never got off the ground with only a 53-run second-wicket partnership between Graeme Smith (30) and Swapnil Asnodkar (26) providing any impetus before Warne clubbed an unbeaten 21 late in the innings.
In the first match of the Kimberley double-header, the Kings XI Punjab sneaked a three-wicket win off the penultimate ball of their innings against the Deccan Chargers.
Australian Andrew Symonds smashed an unbeaten 60 for the Deccan Chargers, but their total of 168 for five proved insufficient.
Punjab’s run-chase was led by Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene, who pummeled his way to 43 off 28 balls before being run out.
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