Sports: Cricket, Tube Trouble

A former Prasar Bharati adviser charges the ICC and WorldTel chiefs of foul play in a telecast deal

Dhaka in October 1998 was like Rio during the annual carnival. Passions ran high as joyous people filled the streets. Banga Bandhu Stadium, venue of the Mini Cricket World Cup, was equally charged and cricket lovers worldwide sat hooked to their television sets to catch the best the nine participating teams could offer.

AGRAWAL'S ALLEGATIONS

STEP 1
WorldTel-Stracon bag the US$3 million international telecast rights for the Dhaka tournament, despite better bids available with the ICC from Nimbus and TWI.
STEP 2
DD secures the Indian telecast rights for $8 million. This after telling the ICC that it was in no position to pay more than $4 million.
STEP 3
Dalmiya and Mascarenhas make the best of DD's overpricing. The Indian Government stands to lose nearly Rs 20 crore.
STEP 4
India's $8 million deal for domestic telecast rights is 40 times more than what Pakistan paid the ICC for the coverage of the tournament in the country -- $200,000.

But for a few powerful people connected with the game, it mattered little who won or lost. At least, that is what Arun Agrawal, one-time financial adviser of the Prasar Bharati (PB) and nephew of its former CEO O.P. Kejriwal, will have you believe. Exactly a year ago, he had submitted to the PB a report titled "DD Sports Consortium" on, among other things, the "serious irregularities" in the awarding of the telecasting rights for the Mini World Cup. For a full year, he kept quiet. Then last week, as the cricketing world was still reeling under the charges of match-fixing, betting and bribery, his conscience seemingly pricked him. Even as International Cricket Council (ICC) President Jagmohan Dalmiya was telling top sports officials in the country that a CBI probe was in order to get to the bottom of the scandals that had befallen Indian cricket, Agrawal named Dalmiya and Mark Mascarenhas, owner of WorldTel, a TV production house, as beneficiaries of DD's telecast deal.

What stoked Agrawal's curiosity was a letter that the PB sent to Dalmiya on March 4, 1998, in which it had committed to pay the ICC through its telecasting outfit, Doordarshan, "$4 million (Rs 17.2 crore) for exclusive TV rights for the Indian territory" for the Mini World Cup. After negotiations, dd offered $8 million (Rs 34.4 crore) but eventually acquired the global rights for telecasting the event for $11 million (Rs 47.3 crore). Of this, $8 million was for the rights for domestic telecast alone.

According to him, the "extra" amount that DD bid for the Indian rights was "siphoned away by Dalmiya and Mascarenhas". Their modus operandi was simple: the bid on behalf of DD was made by a little-known firm called Stracon. The bid was raised from $8 million to $11 million because the officer in DD who handled the matter, Rakesh Bahadur -- later moved out -- "felt" that a rival bidder, TWI (bidding on behalf of the ESPN-Star combine) had offered a higher amount. It was shocking that there was no evidence to show there were any such bids. Nor had the ICC sought a higher fee. "There is no documentary evidence to show that the TWI or any other competitor had made an offer for an amount higher than $8 million," says Agrawal.

To make matters murkier, just days before the bid closed, Dalmiya sent a fax to the PB, asking it to open a bank guarantee amounting to 10 per cent of the bid amount. Strangely, there was no such precondition in the tender document, and Agrawal feels it was done at the last minute to suit the favoured bidder. Stracon, which bid on behalf of DD, however, did not furnish the required bank guarantee. Instead, it asked WorldTel India to do so through a charge following a memorandum of understanding. It stated that the international telecasting rights for the Cup would be handed over to WorldTel in case DD bagged the contract. It eventually did.

As Agrawal sifted through sheaves of contract documents, he learnt that WorldTel had acquired the international rights for a "throwaway" $3 million (Rs 13 crore), while rights for telecasting to India alone went for $8 million, twice the amount initially committed by DD to ICC. This raised the hackles of the top brass in the PB. The charge was that the ICC not only "teamed up" with DD to make the PB shell out twice the committed amount, it also managed to keep out production houses likes TWI and Nimbus, both of whom had bid much higher -- $5 million and $6 million -- for the international rights.

Speaking to India Today from Connecticut in the US, Mascarenhas rubbished the charges as utter nonsense. "If this person is suggesting that DD look into itself to examine its dealings, both in the past and the present, I am all for an investigative agency like the CBI getting involved." Dalmiya echoed similar sentiments: "When the world is rocked by allegations of match-fixing, a new game has now started which can at best be described as man-fixing." Presumably he was referring to insinuations that Agrawal had been set up by one of Dalmiya's rivals to frame him. It just ain't cricket anymore.

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	May 8, 2000