IPL can alienate a curious public from the game

Whatever way you look at it, media restrictions employed by the Indian Premier League over coverage by websites, such as CricketNext and other electronic outlets, of their event is setting a dangerous precedent.

It is about nefarious efforts to control the fourth estate and earning extra finances through a form of intimidation and where those in power can personally rake off extra moolah as part of the franchise deals.

If unchecked, what can also come from such bullying tactics is the veiled attempt by a paranoid establishment to censor a section of the media of their right to inform the public of what is taking place.

Next to be targeted by officialdom could be Test and the limited overs internationals. Maybe to the extent of banning television stations sports programmes from showing action clips of a day's play or games unless certain financial arrangement is made.

In which case, threats could later spread to screening packaged highlights of all games within the BCCI area of control.

It came as no surprise then how all media supply sources reacted to such high-handed tactics. It is at best a public relations disaster and the sooner it is exposed the better.

When a head honcho, such as IPL commissioner Lalith Modi acts as would someone two steps to the right of Genghis Khan, questions need to be asked of what is planned next?

The story is that all websites are excluded from match coverage at the venues. Should they want to run photographs they have to buy them from a United States-based organisation.

This is most interesting and it is understandable why the Editors Guild of India have raised objections and doubts about the accreditation conditions.

For a start, as there are no guarantees of the quality of photographs they are going to receive, why should they be forced to buy a product that could be inferior to their own cameraman's efforts?

And why, in this case, should the media be made to feel as would an unwelcome stepchild through such discriminatory stepfatherly tactics that are being practised here?

The IPL smugly refer to it as a question of 'safeguarding intellectual property rights' and as such their ownership of the franchises put at risk.

Well now, how they arrive at this erroneous conclusion would be interesting.

But it is typical of the muddled thinking that IPL have. One is selling off of photographic image rights to a foreign company to make money out of Indian media organisations. It is as bad as any hostile takeover bid of a journalist photographer's right to cover any event.

Not only that but the denial of the public to view action photographs on sites they visit is a form of censorship, whatever fancy glib phrase that Modi wants to trot out as a facile excuse.

The pity is that the Press Trust of India have agreed, under protest they claim to cover the tournament. No one can blame them as they are a national organisation and in a sense broken ranks.

But the others have not acceded to the demands placed in the way of other agencies by the BCCI surrogate, the IPL, and the latest dictator Modi.

By denying the public access to viewing images of T20 matches the BCCI and the IPL are in danger of alienating a curious public from the game.

In a career that now spans 55 years, and having watched and written about cricket in any number of countries, I have come across many intrusive types as Modi and learn to treat them as someone who is on a serious ego trip at the expense of others.

In Africa there is another Modi-style bully in Zimbabwe's Ozias Bvute, who rushes around in designer suits and a flashy imported German car while thousands of his countrymen and women suffer untold hardships in the daily food queues.

But this attempt by Modi and his gang to hijack the media's rights to take photographs without restriction can so easily backfire on the organisers if they use this as dummy run for future tours.

There is a whisper how the BCCI might attempt to enforce similar conditions on the India media before the Australian tour later this year. It is why such a culpable act as this one is setting a dangerous precedent for the future.