Money a tempting bait for the gullible

Saad Bin Jung

Sports, sex, money and drugs have been associated for hundreds of years. Without the proper safety precautions in place, whenever excess money starts doing the rounds, a society moves into decline. I have been screaming from the roof tops since the past few years, ever since "big money" has come into domestic cricket that the system needs to wake up! The negative effect of this new-wealth needs to be understood and corrective actions taken to overcome its evil.

For those of you who have never met a cricketer, let me give you an example, an insight into our lives. This will highlight how vulnerable a few of our fraternity are to the ills of money and moneyed society.

During my playing days I had team mates still drinking milk from a bottle. They had never sat in a plane before or stayed in a hotel.

When I took them to a party, the barely clad wives of respected people present had the effect of a cabaret. Now put such naive players in an IPL team, with lakhs of rupees coming into their pockets, with easy access to free ills, with foreign cheer leaders sitting in their laps 24/7, staying in five star hotels, with parties thrown by the very rich extending into the early mornings and you have a recipe for total disaster.

The question that then begs an answer is whether, unless properly understood, is a tourney like the IPL a pending catastrophe of mega proportions? Won’t many a talented cricketer drown in this new world? Will not his cricket suffer?

Team managements and the BCCI should ensure that the players, especially the youngsters, should be properly cautioned and correctly exposed to such new trends in cricket.

There is really no point in throwing our innocent youngsters into deep waters without teaching them how to swim and then blaming them for going "bad".

The BCCI and the ICC should lead from the front in cleaning the system. Laws should be enacted that do not permit any person that has been known to take drugs or who has peddled in drugs to be part of the system.

Drug testing should be done on every person connected to cricket, especially during events like the IPL. Anyone associated with the game of cricket in an official capacity should be monitored for drugs.

Players, coaches, team managers, physios, board members, selectors and even team/franchise owners should be closely monitored and tested on a regular basis. If they fail the drug test, they should be removed and never allowed to return.

It is terrible if such safety procedures are not put in place and our talented youngsters exposed to a system that could well ruin them for life and in the process cripple Indian cricket.

I am sure all team owners detest drugs but I do know Dr Vijay Mallya and the owners of the Deccan Chargers team personally and know for a fact that they personally abhor drugs. Maybe the board can request one of them to monitor the cricket circle for them.

If the BCCI does so and they accept the offer, then we can be rest assured that that the game of cricket will be drug free, at least in India!