Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray has made common cause with Janata Dal (U) leader Sharad Yadav in criticising the auction of cricket players by the Indian Premier League and has asked BCCI chief Sharad Pawar to stop what he termed as gambling by the rich.An avid cricket fan, Thackeray urged Pawar to save the game by stopping what he called the tamasha of gambling launched by industrialists. “Mr Sharad Pawar, what is happening in your cricket sector?” Thackeray asked in a signed statement published on the front page of the Sena mouthpiece Saamna on Friday. “The game of cricket is being corrupted by industrialists who are going berserk in your cricket sector.”Pointing out that cricket players were being bought and their prices were being fixed based on their region, he said, “This is going to disturb the concentration of players — cricket will decline in the country. Look at it seriously.”If the trend was allowed to continue, any wealthy person could buy anything with bags of money, “and there will be no need to have a government at all,” he said, adding that ultimately, industrialists would rule the country. “Stop this gambling by industrialists and save cricket,” he said, asking Pawar “Do you have the dynamism to do it?” JD (U) President Sharad Yadav had on Thursday dubbed the IPL auction a “vulgar display of wealth”.Saamna also carried an editorial on Wednesday’s auction, saying the event followed the commercialisation of the game. “Who will believe that India is a poor country?” it said, referring to the huge sums offered to players. While cricket players are being auctioned for huge amounts of money, farmers are committing suicides, unemployment is on the rise and people are going hungry, it said. Besides, players of other sports like football, hockey, gymnastics, wrestling and kabaddi are being ignored.It urged for the need to keep what it called the arrogance of industrialists — that they can buy anything — on leash. It’s not just cricket that had become a marketplace, but even other aspects of life, like education and health services had lost human values, it said. “There is a need to curb this gambling,” it concluded.
