After serving a two year ban, Rajasthan based franchisee Rajasthan Royals will finally return to action in IPL 2018 which will commence April. Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings were suspended for two years because of a match fixing scandal involving their owners.
The match fixing scandal completely shook the Indian cricket fraternity as no one was really aware that the some of the players were engaged in such nuisance. Moreover, not even the CEO of the Royals, Raghu Iyer was aware of such misconducts happening in the locker room.
The infamous spot-fixing scandal broke out with three of Rajasthan Royals players including former India speedster S Sreesanth were arrested. The Jaipur based franchise has been one of the most critically talked about franchise in the league.
Boria Majumdar in his latest book, “Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians” made a funny yet sour revelation.
In the chapter titled ‘Sky Fall’ (Page 181), former CEO of Royals, Raghu Iyer’s recollects the fateful early morning call in his hotel room, which turned the fortunes of the franchise upside down.
Iyer revisited the incidents of early morning of May 16, 2013. “We were staying at The Oberoi and I got a call around 5:30 am from duty manager of the hotel. My wife picked up the call and passed it to me in a jiffy.”
“The duty manager was saying to me that several policemen, including an assistant commissioner from Mumbai Police, were waiting downstairs and I was to go down as soon as possible. “We had a sponsor shoot with Cyrus Broacha (a TV anchor and video jockey) the previous day and my first thought was this was a prank. I was being made a bakra (a famous programme of a popular music channel). I even said so and tried to laugh it off.”
“That was when I was told it was not a prank and that I was being summoned.”
Talking about the arrests Iyer writes:
“They were in no hurry and after explaining to me in detail did they tell me that they were going to Ankeet Chavan’s room to pick him up.”
Iyer gave himself two hours before informing Rahul Dravid about what happened.
“I informed Rahul at 8 am and he was distraught. He had hands on his head and just couldn’t speak. To see a player of his calibre and stature go through this was painful.”
Here’s the news feed:
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