MS Dhoni should have thought twice about doing business with Sahara

Ordinarily, Mahendra Singh Dhoni buying a professional hockey team in his home town of Ranchi wouldn’t merit more than a passing mention. Dhoni is a smart businessman and sports is a growing business in India. He puts two and two together better than most and unlike a lot of professional athletes, knows what he wants to do when he hangs up his pads. But in buying the Ranchi franchise of the Hockey India League, Dhoni should perhaps have given more thought to whom he is getting in to bed with. The co-owner of the Ranchi franchise is Sahara India Pariwar, whose chairman and founder, Subrata Roy, has spent the last six months in jail. The Supreme Court plans on keeping him there until the company comes up with a viable way to raise Rs 24,000 crore to pay back its investors. The Court was not shy about detailing the prospective scale of Sahara’s alleged crime either: “Market abuse is a serious financial crime which undermines the very financial structure of this country and will make imbalance in wealth between haves and have nots,” the court said in its order dated 4 March, 2010. [caption id=“attachment_1782897” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File picture of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Getty Images[/caption] To be fair to Dhoni, Sahara has been a loyal and visible investor in Indian sports for a long time. Until recently, they were the title sponsors for the Indian cricket team for over a decade and owned an IPL team. Sahara still owns a 42.5% stake in the Force India Formula 1 Team, a team in the Indian Badminton League, sponsors the India national field hockey team, the Indian Volleyball team and sponsors a number of India’s athletes. There is doubtless a level of comfort between Dhoni and Sahara. However, Dhoni is a national icon and a hero to millions around the country. By choosing to have Sahara as a business partner, he is unwittingly sending out a signal that it doesn’t matter to him that its owner is in jail or that tens of thousands might have been ripped off by the very people he now calls. It is also hard to imagine that Dhoni, who is India’s richest sportsperson, couldn’t have found a more wholesome business partner, one that does not have India’s Supreme Court looking over it’s shoulder. The Dhoni brand has taken a beating in recent times. His Test captaincy in England was heavily criticised, with legendary Australia captains Ian Chappell and Steve Waugh going so far as to say it was time the BCCI replaced Dhoni with Virat Kohli in the five-day game. Potentially more damning is the Justice Mudgal Committee report on allegations of betting and fixing in the IPL. In the preliminary report filed back in February, the committee concluded that Gurunath Meiyappan was a Chennai Super Kings official and indicated that Dhoni, among others, had not been forthcoming on Meiyappan’s role in the team: “Mr. M.S. Dhoni, Mr. N. Srinivasan and officials of India Cements took the stand that Mr. Meiyappan had nothing to do with the cricketing affairs of Chennai Super Kings and was a mere cricket enthusiast supporting CSK,” the report said Supreme Court lawyer Harish Salve made the same point in in a television interview: “The committee found Meiyappan would sit in the team dug-out,” Salve told CNN-IBN. “Surely Dhoni knew that. The committee found Meiyappan would bid for players at auctions. He might even have bid for Dhoni. Surely Dhoni knew that.” Salve urged the BCCI to investigate why Dhoni gave false evidence but it was always going to be a plea that fell on deaf years. But if the Supreme Court comes to the same conclusion next month when case comes up for hearing again, it will be much harder for the BCCI, and Dhoni, to disregard. Dhoni, as is his wont, ignores public opinion and follows his own counsel. There is much to be admired in such an attitude. And when he says his ambition is “to develop hockey at the grassroots’ level”, he is undoubtedly speaking from his heart. But if a man is known by the company he keeps, tying up with Sahara dulls the Dhoni halo just that little bit more.