Is IPL Fixed? LSG Owner Dr. Sanjiv Goenka Opens Up

Look, that situation arose in the game. I don't say it was right or wrong. It's easy to be judgmental, but it's not for us to judge what sentiment was in his mind at that time. It is for that person. But I told Naveen that if you need any support, if you're feeling insecure, we are there to support you. But it's not only about showing that you have the spirit to fight. If I were you, I would have said, 'You said that? I'll bowl in such a way that your team loses.' Let the work speak. Let the work speak. That's one approach. Naveen is a very good boy, a very good boy, and large-hearted too. So he went and made up with Virat. Now Virat is Virat, so Virat also made up equally. These situations happen. Now, if a situation like this between Hardik and Siraj comes up, as an owner, you just have to cut them some slack.

Look, sometimes you feel that in the league stage, there are 14 games. You have to win eight games to qualify for the playoffs. And you'll see very few teams win more than nine games. So you will lose four, five, six. The point is, do you lose fighting or do you lose surrendering? That's the difference. We notice the attitude because it's not as simple as a binary win or lose. It's because you may go in with a great attitude, but the other team may just have a brilliant day and their attitude may be better. I've told Hardik and Krunal that as a cricketer, one thing you truly understand is that there's a huge luck factor sometimes in games. And that's the reality of sports, which sometimes the public doesn't understand. That luck sometimes goes against you and sometimes in your favor. At that moment, you feel it's against you, but if you look over a period of two years, it goes in your favor too.

Like it's such a... it's such an... and how do you explain it now? Because you don't have to explain. If you're making a judgment without any information, without any knowledge, without any basis, I don't want to explain to you. No way. The Sachin ecosystem can't be fully... it can't be. What it suggests is the opposite. I feel what happened between the England-Pakistan series, where three players were jailed, maybe those are one-off situations that cast a stain on the entire cricketing ecosystem. But look, I can say this: this thing is not possible. At least in the IPL, it's absolutely not possible. If it's not in the IPL, it's not anywhere. And I give a lot of credit to Jay Shah, to the BCCI, the way they have handled it and have kept India at a certain level, a high level, a victory level, where in every format, India now has not one, not two, but three teams you can field for three parallel tournaments. This is a huge contribution of the BCCI to cricket.

When I had one team, I wanted to see more. Now that I have ten, I don't want to see more.