Politicians in Tamil Nadu are setting their sights on the IPL as a means to make their point on the Centre’s reluctance to form the Cauvery Management Board. Their call to not hold IPL matches in Chennai straightaway mixes sport and politics. Using sporting ties as a way to pressure Pakistan and its propensity to employ terrorism as state policy has been an acceptable method in international relations. However, national sport has never been subjected to such political pulls and pressures. They used to object to Sri Lankans appearing in IPL matches in Chennai. The latest move now calling for matches not to be held in the capital of the Tamils is for the national, inter-state issue of Cauvery waters, which can be solved only by the executive following the orders of the supreme judiciary in a dispute that is more than a century old.
The pattern of agitations in Tamil Nadu opposing the likes of the Sterlite copper smelting plant expansion, the Neutrino project, methane extraction and an inter-state gas pipeline would suggest the state is a bubbling cauldron of protest. The manner in which the heat is being generated also suggests that pressure points are being exploited against a government which is seen as weak since its majority in the Assembly is in doubt and subject to a high court verdict on the Speaker’s disqualification of a few ruling party MLAs of one particular faction. The politicians are barking up a wrong tree when they call for the abandoning of IPL matches. If they so desire, they could boycott the games of the Chennai Super Kings, a team that has just returned to IPL after a two-year ban on the charge that a team principal was involved in betting. To mix up cricket, which is a national unifying force and politics is uncalled for.
