Curry has become too strong, and now has a smell

In the professional sport arena, with its fierce competition for television viewership and match attendance, cricket – in particular the shortest format of the game – seems to be in trouble, as was evident the past weekend when at least three weekend newspapers (mainline and traditional cricket-loving) hardly mentioned the Cricket Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies. And the two highest ranked teams in the world, India and South Africa, had played on Sunday!

The main threats to the game, ironically, both come from India which is also the greatest benefactor of the game. Not only in terms of exposure has the curry become a bit too much – with the number of games, tournaments and player exposure – but now it has developed an unsavoury smell.

India's cricket board has suspended Indian Premier League (IPL) chief Lalit Modi over corruption allegations, in the worst crisis to hit the Indian game this century.

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

This revelation caused a storm that sparked Mr 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 multibillion-dollar industry, attracting some of India's wealthiest businessmen and women.

At an emergency meeting on Monday, the Indian cricket board, the BCCI, named an interim chairperson and said it was searching for "missing" IPL documents.

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

Players sucked in

Some of the world's top cricketers play for the lucrative IPL.

On Monday, the BCCI said it had appointed Chirayu Amin, an industrialist and head of the Baroda Cricket Association, as interim chairperson.

It said a number of documents were missing from the IPL office, for which tax officials had been asking.

The BCCI appointed a board member to oversee their collection.

It confirmed Mr Modi's suspension and asked him to reply to the allegations against him.

"If Modi's reply convinces the members, proceedings will be dropped. So we will wait for his reply," the BCCI told the BBC.

BCCI president Shashank Manohar had waited until the end of the IPL final on Sunday to announce Mr Modi's suspension.

"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," he said in a statement.

Mr 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 has denied the allegations.

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

The Indian correspondent for the BBC said on his Twitter: “This is Indian cricket's worst crisis since the match-fixing calumny at the turn of the decade – and if Indian cricket sneezes, world cricket will catch a cold."

Perhaps this is the understatement of the year. It is akin to calling the Chernobyl disaster an environmental spill, or the murder of Mr Eugene Terreblanche a social mishap.

It has seriously tainted the image of international cricket and could have long-term repercussions if the administrators do not act decisively.

Overexposure

The damage to the game is not simply due to the corruption charges against Modi, but also because of the overexposure of the game. There have been 37 games in six weeks in the IPL. Cricket fans have had enough of sixes and fours for a while.

What cricket requires is good, honest Test cricket between the super powers on a regular basis – without smoke, fire, belly dancers and rock ‘n roll.

Perhaps the sanguine Gerald Majola, executive chief of Cricket South Africa, has given world cricket sound advice when he suggested that the whole idea of day/night Tests should be abolished before a ball was bowled in anger.

Instead, the administrators should be contemplating the introduction of a two-tier Test cricket competition. The top four nations would be playing one another once in two years, while the bottom four would be involved in their own competition.

There could be promotion-relegation fixtures once in two years, but the idea is appealing.

Why? Because it features the best nations in the world against one another in a form of the game that is very difficult to ‘fix’. Product is king, and when South Africa featured against England at the Wanderers in the final Test in January, it was fully booked for at least a day.

The same thing occurs when England plays Australia in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG in Melbourne. It is not extraordinary to see 75 000 people pouring into the cricket ground on day one.

The greatest asset of the IPL has been that it became a lucrative global showpiece with commercial interest raised totalling R4.2 billion. But that has also proved to be its potential downfall. And without strict control measures and the backing, support and administrative assistance of the International Cricket Council (ICC), it is doomed for disaster.

This was evident in April when there was a security breach in Mumbai while the Bangalore Royal Challengers were playing and a bomb scare had the spectators scurrying for cover. Why? Because of the lack of stringent security measures that usually are in place when the ICC organises an international event.

The ICC needs to step in to save world cricket from disaster. Without stricter control and a reduction of the length of the IPL, the consequences for international cricket could be dire.