Sport Industry Group

Modi suspended as Indian Premier League chief- 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00

The Board of Cricket Control in India has suspended Lalit Modi as chief executive of the Indian Premier League over allegations of corruption in one of the worst crises to hit the sport in recent years.

At an emergency meeting the BCCI named an interim chairman and said it was searching for ‘missing’ IPL documents.

Modi, who is being investigated by tax officials, denies all allegations of wrongdoing.

The BCCI has appointed Chirayu Amin, an industrialist and head of the Baroda Cricket Association, as interim chairman.

The BCCI statement read: ‘If Modi's reply convinces the members, proceedings will be dropped. So we will wait for his reply.’

BCCI president Shashank Manohar stated: ‘The alleged acts of individual misdemeanours of Mr Lalit K Modi... have brought a bad name to the administration of cricket and the game itself.’

Modi was suspended from ‘participating in the affairs of the board, the IPL, the working committee and any other committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India’.

Modi was originally scheduled to attend Monday's emergency meeting in Mumbai but refused to do so.

On Sunday he changed course and said he would attend but the charges against him would have to be made in writing, prompting the suspension.

When he heard of the suspension, Modi reacted defiantly.

‘Good for them,’ he told Indian TV channel NDTV. ‘Are they so scared of me attending? Are they so scared of the truth? I will not be able to attend the meeting, but I will wait for my turn.’

Earlier, in an address to the crowd after the IPL final, he insisted the league was ‘clean and transparent’.

‘There have been some off-field unpleasant dramas based on the unknown, half-truths and motivated leaks from all sorts of sources.

‘I reassure you that if there has been any flouting of the rules and regulations or if there have been any irregularities, I shall take full responsibility.’

The crisis erupted after Modi revealed on his Twitter account that a female friend of Shashi Tharoor, a junior government minister, had invested in a consortium awarded a new IPL franchise in Kochi.

That revelation caused a storm which sparked Tharoor's resignation and also led to government investigations into the teams, sponsors, broadcasters and event managers associated with the IPL.

The IPL has become a multi-billion dollar industry, which attracts some of India's wealthiest businessmen and women, and features a host of world’s top cricket stars.

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