IPL Spot-Fixing and Franchise Suspensions (2013)

By 2013 the Indian Premier League was six years old and had become the dominant economic force in world cricket. Franchise valuations had multiplied; broadcast deals were among the largest in any sport globally; and the IPL had reshaped player movement, payment structures and tournament schedules across the international game. It had also been shadowed, almost from the start, by allegations of betting and fixing. The 2010 ICC report on corruption in cricket had identified the T20 franchise format as particularly vulnerable, given its mid-innings pauses, fixed-over structure and the velocity of betting markets that surrounded each match. The BCCI had publicly insisted that the IPL was clean. Privately, the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit was understood to be tracking patterns of unusual betting in particular matches.

The 2013 IPL season opened in early April with no public sense of impending crisis. The Chennai Super Kings, led by MS Dhoni and chaired through team principal Gurunath Meiyappan — son-in-law of BCCI president N. Srinivasan — were the dominant franchise of the era. The Rajasthan Royals, owned through a complex structure that included Bollywood interests and the entrepreneur Raj Kundra, had been the first IPL champions in 2008 and remained a competitive side built on shrewd domestic recruitment. Both teams' off-field structures, as the next two months would reveal, had been compromised in ways the on-field cricket had not advertised.

On 16 May 2013, the Delhi Police arrested three Rajasthan Royals players — fast bowler S. Sreesanth, all-rounder Ajit Chandila and left-arm seamer Ankeet Chavan — on allegations of spot-fixing during specific overs of recent IPL matches. The arrests were the result of months of telephone surveillance by the Delhi Police's Special Cell, which had been monitoring suspected bookmaker networks across multiple Indian cities. The pattern alleged was specific: a player would agree in advance with a bookmaker to bowl a particular over giving away a minimum number of runs, signalling the agreement at the start of the over by a pre-arranged gesture (Sreesanth's alleged signal involved the placement of a towel in his trouser waistband). The bookmakers would then place coordinated bets on the over's outcome.

Within days the case widened. Mumbai Police arrested Gurunath Meiyappan on 24 May, alleging he had been betting on IPL matches — including matches involving CSK — through a network that included the actor Vindu Dara Singh. Raj Kundra, co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals, was named in subsequent filings on similar betting allegations. The crisis now extended from individual player corruption to ownership-level wrongdoing at two of the IPL's most prominent franchises, with one of the principals connected by marriage to the BCCI president himself.

The 2013 IPL season was engulfed in scandal when Delhi police arrested three Rajasthan Royals players — S. Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan, and Ajit Chandila — for spot-fixing during IPL matches. The arrests, which included dramatic footage of players being led away in handcuffs, sent shockwaves through the tournament and triggered wider investigations into corruption in the IPL.

The investigations led to far more damaging revelations. Gurunath Meiyappan, son-in-law of then-BCCI president N. Srinivasan and team principal of Chennai Super Kings, was found to have been involved in betting on IPL matches. Raj Kundra, co-owner of Rajasthan Royals, was similarly implicated. The Supreme Court of India appointed a committee led by Justice R.M. Lodha, which recommended and enforced the suspension of both franchises for two years (2016 and 2017). Srinivasan was forced to step aside as BCCI president.

The Lodha Committee's recommendations went far beyond the fixing scandal, leading to sweeping governance reforms at the BCCI including age limits for administrators, cooling-off periods, and limits on the number of terms an official could serve. The 2013 scandal exposed the deep conflicts of interest within Indian cricket's governance — the BCCI president's family being involved in team ownership was a staggering governance failure — and ultimately led to the most significant reforms in the board's history.

“I have done nothing wrong. I am being made a scapegoat.”

“The structure of Indian cricket administration is broken. The remedy must be structural, not personal.”

“He is my son-in-law. He is not a BCCI official. The BCCI does not need to take any action.”

“We find Mr Meiyappan to be a team official of the Chennai Super Kings within the meaning of the IPL Regulations.”

“The discharge from criminal proceedings does not affect the BCCI's disciplinary findings against the players.”

The procedural response was extraordinary. The Bombay High Court in July 2013 declared the BCCI's two-member internal inquiry into Meiyappan illegal because of the obvious conflict of interest in N. Srinivasan presiding over an investigation involving his own son-in-law. The Supreme Court took up the matter directly and, in a series of orders that fundamentally restructured Indian cricket governance, appointed the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee to investigate the allegations. The Mudgal Committee reported in early 2014 that Meiyappan had indeed been betting on IPL matches and that there was prima facie evidence of involvement in fixing. Raj Kundra was found to have placed bets on matches involving his own franchise.

In January 2015 the Supreme Court appointed the three-member Lodha Committee — chaired by former Chief Justice R.M. Lodha — to determine the punishment and to propose structural reforms to Indian cricket. The Lodha Committee's first report in July 2015 suspended India Cements (owners of CSK) and Jaipur IPL Cricket (owners of RR) from any IPL participation for two years. Meiyappan and Kundra were banned for life from any cricketing activity under the BCCI's authority. The Supreme Court accepted the recommendations in full.

The criminal cases against the players took longer and ended differently. Sreesanth, Chandila and Chavan were discharged by the Patiala House Court in 2015 on the technical ground that the offences alleged did not constitute crimes under the specific sections of the Indian Penal Code under which they had been charged. The BCCI maintained the life bans on all three players regardless of the criminal acquittal — a position the Supreme Court upheld in March 2019 when it lifted Sreesanth's ban but explicitly noted that the BCCI's own disciplinary findings were valid.