Top 10 scandals in Indian sports

6. IPL 2013 spot-fixing scandal

S Sreesanth

The incident that rocked the 2013 IPL was the spot-fixing case involving 3 Rajastan Royals players – S Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandalia. The players had reportedly agreed to give away a predetermined number of runs in their overs using “articulate” signals for the bookies during the match, who would in turn make a fortune out of just six balls bowled by these players. The players were to receive a whopping 60-lakh rupees for the shameful performance. Thankfully, however, justice prevailed.

On 6th May 2013 Sunil Bhatia, a bookie arrested by Delhi Police, along with the other miscreants, said that he was involved in fixing in Indian Cricket League and Bangladesh Premier League besides the IPL, leading to speculations that the entire fixing scandal runs even deeper. Later, Vindu Dara Singh was arrested for alleged links to bookies in the affair. He was later released on bail on 3 June 2013 by a Mumbai court. The call records of Vindu Dara Singh in connection with the spot-fixing scandal showed that he was in frequent contact with Chennai Super Kings (CSK) Team Principal and BCCI President N. Sreenivasan’s son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan.

While the investigations into the entire scandal are still going on in the courts, Sreesanth and Ankeet Chavan have been handed life-bans by the BCCI. Siddharth Trivedi, meanwhile, was suspended for a year for not reporting being approached by bookies among other things. There has been no ruling as yet on off-spinner Ajit Chandila, the third Royals player who was arrested last May.

5. The athletics doping scandal

To maintain a competent physique in the world of international sports, athletes are administered all kinds of supplements to serve various purposes. Generally, they blindly follow the instructions given by their coaches and physicians. And very often, either lack of knowledge about the supplements or the unfortunate willingness to indulge in steroid use causes them to fail one or more of the ubiquitous drug tests administered by the governing bodies.

One such incident took place in the year 2011, which saw the biggest scandal in Indian athletics history as six top Indian women athletes, including three Asian and Commonwealth Games gold medallists, failed their drug tests. The reason for the positive test results was found to be the food supplements being used by the players. As the court found their involvement to be due to lack of knowledge of the presence of banned substances, the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland announced a two-year ban on the six athletes which killed their chances of appearing in the 2012 Olympics held in London, UK.

“All competitive results obtained by Ms Mandeep Kaur from 25 May 2011, by Ms Jauna Murmu from 26 May 2011, by Ms Ashwini and Ms Panwar from 27 June 2011 and by Ms Thomas and Ms Jose from 12 June 2011 until the commencement of their previous period of ineligibility shall be disqualified, with all resulting consequences, in accordance with IAAF Rule 40.8,” the CAS said.

Although the sports authority launched a formal investigation into the matter, it only brought to light glaring shortcomings in the entire sports system. The outcome of the investigation said that the banned substances entered the athletes bodies “accidentally”; the reason for that was the ingestion of supplements administered by their Ukrainian coach Yuri Ogorodnik, who fled the country immediately after the unveiling of the scandal and was later sacked by the sports authority.