Former India captain Bishen Singh Bedi on Saturday launched a scathing attack on suspended IPL commissioner Lalit Modi, calling him a "spoilt brat" and a "bugger", who has damaged the reputation of the game beyond recovery by commercialising it.
Bedi, going on the offensive against the members of the IPL Governing Council and the cricket board (BCCI), said greed took over their mind and they all turned blind eye towards the IPL czar and his sleazy functioning of the tournament.
"Lalit Modi is a spoilt brat. Without knowing anything about the game, without knowing it at the grass-root level, look what he was running, a cricket tournament. And above all, during the final at D Y Patil stadium in Mumbai, this bugger was tossing the coin in the presence of Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Look at the guts of this person," Bedi said.
"To my mind, Modi has damaged the Indian cricket very badly. I must say, it was not the need, but the greed that had taken everybody with a clean swipe.
"They (BCCI and IPL governing council) knew it all along, but they did not have the guts to put Modi in place. In a sense they were colluding. They turned blind eye towards him and the tournament. They were colluding.
"I'll tell you there was a clash of interest as far as N Srinivasan was concerned. He is the secretary of BCCI and one of his own team (Chennai Super Kings) won the tournament. And chairman of the selection committee (K Srikkanth) is the ambassador of that team. You see they were colluding," Bedi told Karan Thapar in Devil's Advocate on CNN-IBN.
Terming the IPL tournament more of a tamasha, Bedi said, "cricket is something associated with upright and ethics and Modi brought all the sleaze and irregularities into it, which was against the spirit of the game."
"It's a crass commercialisation. That's the word. This is crass and not the cricket. IPL and controversy associated with it, it's all tamasha. Look at the World Twenty20, it lasts for 16 days and this IPL, it lasts for 60 days. It's too much," he said.
Bedi also asked the members of the governing council to take the moral responsibility and step down voluntarily.
"Money and greed led to the downfall of IPL. It was inevitable. The way they were going, disaster was waiting to happen.
"And this involves more responsibility of the governing council. They were watching all this without uttering a word. Why? They were involved. So these people should take the moral responsibility and resign voluntarily," he said.
Training his guns towards three former Indian cricketers who were part of the IPL governing body, Bedi said they were paid huge sum of money to join the T20 league and "that money is stopping them from resigning from their post."
"Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar and Tiger Pataudi should have resigned from the council by now. Gavaskar and Shastri were commentating during the whole tournament. Pataudi was doing nothing. You can't allow your names to be misused by a person (Modi) whom you don't know exactly.
"Money is stopping them, keeping them quiet. I'll leave it to their conscience whether it's the right thing to do," he said.
Bedi said barring BCCI president Shashank Manohar, whole cricket board right from the vice-presidential level to secretary level, who were part of IPL tournament, should step aside to clean up the monumental mess and set an example for the future generation.
"If you want to set an example, whole of BCCI from top to bottom, from all of them who were part of the IPL from secretary level to vice-presidential level, need to step aside.
"BCCI should clean the mess on its own. They would need to make good attempts to clean all the mess. No outside support, no outside inquiry.
"BCCI have got affected by all this. It was the last straw. They couldn't have carried it in any further," he said.
Bedi also hoped that Indian cricket will soon come out of this mess and good name of cricket and fair image of India would be restored soon.
"It might have affected the image of the game. But cricket is a such a big institution. It will definitely come out of it."
He said, keeping in mind the public sentiments, IPL as a world famous event, needs to be protected and preserved.
"I am going by the public response. It's a great tournament and you can't leave public left in the lurch. You need to infuse new blood in the governing council," he added.
