One of the world’s most controversial sporting events is back on track

THE lobby of the Royal Gardenia, an “eco-friendly” five-star hotel, was crowded with television crews and photographers on January 8th and 9th. Bollywood stars and business tycoons were also on display, including Bangalore’s “King of Good Times”, Vijay Mallya, a flamboyant brewer and airline owner. They were shopping for cricketers to play for their respective teams in the Indian Premier League (IPL), a three-year-old contest that has transformed India’s favourite game and transfixed the country. In a two-day player auction watched live on television by around 19m people, 127 cricketers were sold for $62m.

For the owners and the IPL’s organisers, this was cause for relief. Since the conclusion of its third six-week season, last April, the league has been beset by feuding and scandal on an all-India scale. A high-profile minister, Shashi Tharoor, lost his job in a row over the finances of a new IPL team for which he had lobbied. The league’s charismatic creator and boss, Lalit Modi, was charged by India’s cricket board with taking multi-million-dollar kickbacks and other misdemeanours. (Both men deny wrongdoing.) Two of the IPL’s ten teams, based in Rajasthan and Punjab, were accused of irregularities in their ownership and expelled. They were reinstated last month, at least temporarily, on the courts’ say-so. On the eve of the auction, there were rumours it would be cancelled and the next season, due in April, postponed. But the brouhaha now seems overdone. The IPL, which is estimated to be worth over $4 billion, is probably too big to fail. …