MS Gill, Sports Minister, today criticised BCCI for commercial use of cricket for business gains. BCCI has recently introduced an SMS game that requires cricket fans to make ball by ball predictions for cash prizes in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL).
Gill said that this is like openly encouraging gambling and betting, which official bodies do not resort to.
This has also been widely criticised by cricket experts. Gill also said that the BCCI should have taken to consideration of the damage done to cricket by the 2000 match-fixing scandal before introducing such a game.
Gill said, “Cricket is part of the family of sports in our country. Its current riches, do not set it apart from other games. The actions of the BCCI, are bound to impact the thinking in other sports, sometime or the other. We have already had, sometime back, a match-fixing scandal, in the game. It seems the ICC, had expressed concerns about such possibilities, in the IPL league.”
He also said that he would suggest to the BCCI that as the richest and most powerful sports body in India, they have a larger responsibility to discharge.
