IPL 2018 moves out of Chennai: Who is to be blamed for extending CSK fans' wait for cricket?

MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings (CSK) won the match against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Chepauk on Tuesday night. Outside the MA Chidambaram stadium in Chennai, however, Seeman, Velmurugan and their rowdy team won the day. The decision to move the remaining six Indian Premier League (IPL) matches involving CSK out of Chennai will be interpreted as a victory for the protesters. The Gentleman’s Game has lost to the bullies. [caption id=“attachment_4427899” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Protesters clash with police near the MA Chidhambram stadium in Chennai during the IPL match between CSK and KKR on Tuesday. AFP[/caption] For those unfamiliar with these names, Seeman heads a political party Naam Tamilar Katchi in Tamil Nadu. A former filmmaker and actor, he is a supporter of the LTTE and an ardent campaigner of the Tamil language. Velmurugan of the Thamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi (TVK) has been an MLA in the Tamil Nadu assembly in the past, elected on the PMK ticket. He warned the cricket players that if anything happened to them, TVK wouldn’t be responsible. The scenes on the roads leading to the stadium were not the kind one has seen in a long time. Goons belonging to these two outfits assaulted policemen in full glare of TV cameras. They even roughed up fans, marking out those who were seen sporting the CSK yellow jersey, for special treatment. A video of the Chennai team’s mascot Saravanan Hari, who paints his body yellow before every CSK match, being roughed up by two men, went viral. Make no mistake about it. This is shameful, despicable and embarrasses Chennai. The men who indulged in such lumpen behaviour are by no stretch of imagination, lovers of the game or even proud Tamilians. For if they indeed cared about what an average Thamizhan loved, they would not hurt either cricket fans or the city’s reputation. An average Thamizhan is passionate about three Cs — Cinema, Cricket and Cauvery. That explains the craze for a Rajinikanth, Ajith and Vijay, with fans elevating their superstars to the status of demi-gods. That also explains why CSK is such a popular IPL team and why Tamil Nadu was overjoyed to have ‘Thala’ Dhoni and boys back after the two-year ban. Cauvery, referred to as Dakshin Ganges, is the lifeline of Tamil Nadu. Not only do the delta districts depend on the river for drinking and irrigation purposes, even the Veeranam lake reservoir, that supplies water to Chennai, is dependent on Cauvery water released from Mettur dam. Why did things come to such a pass? The AIADMK government outsourced the headache to the Chennai police, choosing to look the other way even when the likes of Seeman, Velmurugan and some Kollywood personalities overstepped the line. Any regime, with its ears to the ground and armed with intelligence reports, would have tried engaging with the protesters, tackling them through back channel talks. That is how politicians cleverly resolve disputes and frayed tempers. The effort should have been to ensure that even if the protest took place, it did not harm the average cricket fan and did not result in ugly scenes playing out on live television. The fringe is bound to take over when the mainstream political process abdicates its responsibility. Politics is about dialogue, arriving at solutions across the table and here the AIADMK failed to use its political acumen to see to it things did not get out of hand. The Chennai police bore the brunt of the rowdyism despite deploying about 4000 men on the ground. But policing is not just about numbers, it is also about effective positioning of resources. If the cops knew the people who would be leading the protests, what prevented them from making preventive arrests? If Velmurugan spoke about letting snakes into the stadium, as TV channels reported, he should have been detained on grounds of being a threat to public security. Conspiracy theories have been doing the rounds that the mainstream opposition parties, while publicly not endorsing cancellation of the IPL matches in Chennai, outsourced the protest to these letterhead outfits. While there is no way to establish that match-fixing of this sort took place, the fact remains that the result achieved would gladden the hearts of those who were not happy with the matches being played at this time. Should cricket and Cauvery have been mixed? There are no easy answers to this one. It is obvious the IPL has been used as a soft target. At the same time, if there had been some engagement between the IPL organisers and those representing Tamil Nadu’s interests, some via media could have been arrived at, to ensure the games were played in Chennai. That should have been the top priority. Rajiv Shukla, the IPL Chairman, is a Congress politician as well. Surely he could have used his political acumen to ensure the Chennai fan did not lose out. Could the CSK have helped matters by expressing solidarity with people of Tamil Nadu over Cauvery? An official associated with CSK’s marketing team told this author that the brand is known for its cricket and would much rather ‘speak’ on the field through their game. The team would like to stay neutral as any statement from them could be interpreted either way, he said. What does this mean for Brand Chennai? It robs the Chennai fan whose hiatus from seeing its home team in action at the IPL has got extended by another year. But the 20000-odd spectators who braved the hostile atmosphere outside Chepauk to get inside, also made a point. Chennai will still remain a city that takes its cricket seriously. Unfortunately, for now, it is cricket that has taken a free hit. But the IPL, I suspect, won’t be the last of the pitched battles. Rajinikanth had gone on record to say it is embarrassing to enjoy IPL at such a time when the Cauvery dispute has not been resolved despite the Supreme Court verdict. He had suggested that CSK players play the match sporting black arm bands. This stance will come back to bite him as his ‘Kaala’ releases on April 27. Will the actor-turned-politician find it embarrassing that his fans should enjoy ‘Kaala’, adding to the bank balance of his son-in-law Dhanush, who is the movie’s producer?