Elliot Hannon
Journalist
twitter: @elliothannon
Selected Projects (2001—2009)
May 31, 2010
– Time Magazine
In professional sports, the off-season isn't supposed to make headlines. When India's fledgling professional cricket league, the Indian Premier League (IPL), ended its season in late April, however, the championship match won by the Chennai Super Kings felt more like a prelude than a grand finale. Sensational tales of corruption among the country's wealthiest and most powerful — the very franchise owners who had made the IPL "the world's hottest sports league" — had shifted the focus from the field to a looming boardroom war over the league's survival.
The intrigue is wrapped up in the fate of the league's founder and chief architect, Lalit Modi. Throughout India, Modi, a member of a powerful Indian family, is both a revered and a reviled figure. The brash businessman's ambition hoisted the IPL into existence, but his impatient bravado has run afoul of India's most entrenched hierarchical reflexes, making him many powerful enemies.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1990799,00.html#ixzz1fSO6dsHp