Lalit Modi Is Not The Devil (There's A Criminal Record To Show It)

                                        

 

J Rod asks why we've failed to mention some of the "extra-curricular" activities of IPL chief Lalit Modi so far. (As it turns out, while a student at Duke University, Modi was convicted of drug possession, assault, and kidnapping, and came away with a suspended 2-year sentence. This first became a story in India during the BCCI elections in 2005.)

It might be a sign of a compromised moral sense, or just simple pragmatics, but I believe the thing that bothers me the most about the story is the simple fact that Modi was actually caught. That's not someone I'd want heading a burgeoning cricket empire. I'd prefer someone competent.

As someone whose cousin is in a Spanish prison as we speak, awaiting trial for drug trafficking -- and as someone who remembers playing with said cousin as a little kid and noticing, even back then, what a bumbling, low-wattage dolt the poor guy was -- I can tell you with some confidence: crime ain't for everyone. And good criminals are good because you've never heard of them. They don't fuck up, and they cover their tracks.

Point is: I'm not surprised that a blustering billionaire narcissist who's reached the highest levels of power in his country has done some shady things in the past. I'm surprised that anyone knows about it.

They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Lalit Modi most definitely exists.

Comments

[Jrod]

That's better.

[D.S. Henry]

Anything you ask, master boss sir. Anything you ask.

[Samir Chopra]

Modi deserves a public flogging for his fascist attitude towards the ICL. So long as this man is in charge of cricket in India, its going to be singularly impossible for me to like anything connected to him (like the IPL, which as predicted has now spawned its bastard child the Champions League).

[D.S. Henry]

Fair enough, Samir. I'm not going to defend Modi.

But until you can show me another competitive, sustainable cricket league, with all the best players in the world and wide public support, he (and his league) are hard to ignore.

[Samir Chopra]

Oh, I'm not ignoring him or his league. I'm actively disliking them both. I'm not apathetic about it. Its under my skin, believe me.

And don't you need to credit "The Usual Suspects?" above? (perhaps they need to credit someone else in turn). Or perhaps that line is like calculus, so well-established we don't need to keep citing Leibniz or Newton every time we use it.

[D.S. Henry]

That's the spirit, Samir! The league will need plenty of tough doubters like you to keep it honest.

As for the line, I just figured it was so well known by now that it was as good as in the public domain. Do we need to reference Shakespeare every time we mention "to be or not to be", or Robert Frost every time we talk of "the road less traveled"?

(The line is actually by Charles Baudelaire originally, or close enough to it, since the original's in French.)

[Samir Chopra]

I had no idea it was Baudelaire. Just goes to show.

[Jrod]

Baudelaire, i know him, he was the model used on the front of a trail of dead album.

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I 'd say you should add these things to the wikipedia page as well man..

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