Book Review: The IPL Story

‘The IPL Story’ rips apart the dark side of the IPL and reveals how Power, Politics and Paisa hijacked the sport.

Chayan Rastogi

That cricket in India is like a religion, has become a cliché for everyone who wants to stress the madness this sport generates in our country. But for the country that is run by the administrators for the greed of money, big money and more money, cricket too has got infected with three Ps- Power, Politics and Paisa! ‘The IPL Story’ by Abhishek Dubey, a senior sports journalist who followed the murky IPL proceeding closely, rips apart the dark side of the Indian Premier League and reveals how the big political honchos and greedy board officials came together and hijacked the league that was once pitted as a threat to successful predecessors like EPL and NFL in the name of love for cricket! The first part of the book by Dubey looks like a diary entry by a sports journalist who is sent to cover a cricket story in IPL but eventually ends up picking clues, gathering information from placed sources and unearthing a much bigger game being played behind the scenes! Narrated in a trademark T20 cricketing style, Dubey dares to open the big black Pandora Box of IPL and dirty politics surrounding it. Starting from early days of IPL to Shashi Tharoor - Sunanda Pushkar controversy, from Kochi’s controversial IPL team bidding to meteoric rise and fall of Lalit Modi- ‘The IPL Story’ gives detailed information about who’s who of the IPL dirt via interviews, investigative research and intriguing background information on key players. The heady cocktail mix of cricket, money, politics and cheerleaders (read: Glamour) has served a captivating subject for TV channels and Indian public for long, and for people who took interest in this corruption saga more than their favourite saas-bahu daily soaps- the 218-page book published by Pearson is the answer to all the controversy related questions that died due to the surfacing of bigger controversies every new day.In the later part of the book, the author reveals the complete life of IPL’s central character Lalit Modi, his tiff with BCCI head officials, Rajasthan’s political connections, his autocratic lifestyle and his quick rise to quicker fall. Dubey also compared Modi with Ramalinga Raju, Suresh Kalmadi, Ashok Chavan and A Raja – the people who bend the system on will but eventually had to go because of media scrutiny. With thoughtful quotes by cricketing fraternity and stalwarts in journalism like Peter Roebuck, Osman Samiuddin, Sharda Ugra and others- Abhishek Dubey has hit a ‘DLF Maximum’ with this book that not exposes controversial facts behind IPL but also like a genuine cricket lover tries to provide solutions that can guide India from cricket superpower to global power. With many a books already in the market on IPL, ‘The IPL Story- Cricket, Glamour and Big Money’ is not the one that grabs eyeballs with a superb title or the cover-page, but with content that emerges as winner- the book is like a sweetly timed cover-drive that will always stand-out as one of the best among other counterparts.Book: The IPL Story - Cricket, Glamour and Big Money Author: Abhishek Dubey Publisher: Pearson Pages: 218 Price: Rs.199/-