The night the richest league in cricket got handcuffed
I still remember how the 2013 IPL season felt. The sixth edition was a carnival — Chris Gayle smashing 175 not out against Pune, the noise in the stadiums, Chennai Super Kings rolling toward another final. Nobody watching on television that May evening had any idea that the Delhi Police Special Cell was, at that exact moment, moving into position in Mumbai. On May 16, 2013, they arrested three Rajasthan Royals cricketers — S. Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan — on charges of spot-fixing, and in the months that followed, two of the biggest franchises in the league would be suspended, an owner banned for life, and the BCCI president forced to step aside. I have covered scandals before — including the 2010 Lord's spot-fixing saga that opened this series — but the 2013 case is different. It is not just a story about three bowlers. It is the story of how betting money reached into the dressing rooms of the IPL itself.
Before we go further, one thing must be said clearly, because it changes how you read everything below: on July 25, 2015, a Delhi court discharged all 36 accused — Sreesanth, Chandila and Chavan among them — ruling there was insufficient evidence to even frame charges. The BCCI's bans, imposed under its own disciplinary process, stayed in place regardless. So when I describe what the police claimed, understand that those claims were never proven in court. That tension — acquitted in court, banned on the field — is the heart of this story.
The season nobody remembers — MI's first title in a burning league
Here is something I find genuinely sad: the 2013 IPL was, on the field, a terrific tournament, and nobody remembers a ball of it. Chris Gayle's 175 not out off 66 balls for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Pune Warriors on April 23 — still the highest individual score in T20 cricket history, with 17 sixes — happened in this season. The final, played at Eden Gardens on May 26, saw Mumbai Indians beat Chennai Super Kings by 23 runs to lift their first IPL trophy. Rohit Sharma's young side, with Lasith Malinga and Harbhajan Singh, against Dhoni's machine. It should have been remembered as the night Mumbai arrived. Instead it is remembered as the night the league nearly fell apart — the final was played ten days after the arrests, with Meiyappan already in custody and the BCCI president's chair empty in all but name.
Think about what that means for the players who had nothing to do with any of it. Rahul Dravid — who captained Rajasthan Royals through the entire crisis, who had built his whole career on being the game's conscience — had to stand in press conferences and answer for three of his players. His players. The 2013 Royals actually reached the playoffs despite the scandal exploding around them mid-season; Dravid's team finished third. I have always thought that run, under those circumstances, was one of the great underrated leadership performances in IPL history, and it gets no credit because the season itself is radioactive. When a scandal is big enough, it eats the cricket too.
What the police said happened — the signals, the towel, the overs
Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar called a press conference on May 16 and laid out a case that sounded, frankly, like a film script. According to the police, bookies and players had agreed on pre-decided signals: a towel tucked into the trousers, wristbands, neck chains, lockets — small gestures that would tell the betting syndicate, watching on television like everyone else, that a particular over was "compromised." In that over, the bowler would concede a fixed number of runs. Bookies would bet heavily on that over, and everyone in the chain would profit. The mastermind, police said, was sitting abroad, and they alleged underworld links to the operation.
The specifics, per the police case, went like this:
- Sreesanth — Rajasthan Royals vs Kings XI Punjab, Mohali, May 9, 2013: police claimed he agreed to concede 14 or more runs in the second over of his spell, and would signal readiness by tucking his towel into his trousers and doing stretching exercises — the stretching, they said, was to give the bookies time to place their bets. He actually conceded 13 runs in that over. On money, there is a conflict in the reporting worth noting: the initial police briefing spoke of Rs 40 lakh, while the prosecution's chargesheet, as summarized by ESPNcricinfo from the trial court order, put the deal at Rs 60 lakh total with Rs 10 lakh paid as advance in the first week of May — arranged through his close friend Jiju Janardhanan, who was in touch with bookie Chandresh Patel.
- Ankeet Chavan — Rajasthan Royals vs Mumbai Indians, Mumbai, May 15, 2013 (the night before the arrests): police said he was to concede 13 runs in his second over — Commissioner Neeraj Kumar claimed he did it "from the first three balls of that over." NDTV's account said the ask was 14 or more runs for a promised Rs 60 lakh. Chavan is the one player police publicly claimed "broke down" under interrogation on May 17 and admitted his role. A confession to police is not admissible in Indian courts, his lawyers maintained his innocence, and — as noted — the court ultimately discharged him. But in the media storm of that week, that claimed confession made him the face of guilt.
- Ajit Chandila — Rajasthan Royals vs Pune Warriors, Jaipur, May 5, 2013: police said he conceded the agreed 14 runs in the second over of his spell but forgot to give the pre-decided signal (pulling up his shirt), so the bookies could not bet on it. That led to an argument and a demand to return the money. Figures conflict here too: Cricbuzz reported Rs 20 lakh advanced with another Rs 20 lakh promised; the Indian Express reported a higher figure of Rs 49 lakh given to Chandila.
The BCCI suspended all three the same day the arrests happened — May 16 — pending inquiry. Sreesanth was picked up from a friend's house in Mumbai's Carter Road area; Chandila and Chavan from the team hotel at Nariman Point. Alongside the players, 11 bookies were arrested that day, and more names surfaced over the following weeks — including former Rajasthan Royals player Amit Singh, arrested May 17 as an alleged bookie intermediary. On July 30, 2013, the Delhi Police chargesheet went further and named underworld figures Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel as controlling the fixing and betting market — both were later declared proclaimed offenders.
I want to pause here and be honest about something. Reading these police briefings thirteen years later, what strikes me is how theatrical the "signals" sound — the towel, the stretching, the shirt-pull. The police were describing a system that required a bowler to bowl badly on live television, in front of millions, at an exact pre-agreed moment, while bookies watched for a locket glint. It is either brazen genius or brazen fiction, and the court eventually decided the evidence could not prove it was either. Hold that thought; it matters for the ending.
The Chennai angle — the "team principal" who said he was just a fan
The players' arrests were the explosion. The aftershock hit Chennai. Gurunath Meiyappan, the son-in-law of BCCI president N. Srinivasan, carried the title of Chennai Super Kings "team principal" — it was on his own verified Twitter profile. On May 24/25, 2013, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch arrested him on charges of betting on IPL matches and passing inside team information — team composition, batting and bowling orders — to bookies through the actor Vindu Dara Singh (son of the legendary Dara Singh), who had himself been arrested a few days earlier.
Mumbai Joint Commissioner Himanshu Roy said intercepted phone calls between Meiyappan and Vindu showed coded discussions of betting. Meiyappan was charged under IPC sections for cheating and forgery, plus the Gambling Act. And here is the part I find fascinating: Meiyappan admitted he was a gambler — "I admit I am a gambler. I have bet crores, and have won and lost crores too," he said — but denied being a fixer. Police said he had been betting through Vindu for two years, winning roughly 80% of his bets, mostly on CSK. Both men got bail on June 4, 2013.
Now watch what India Cements and CSK did next, because this became the second scandal inside the scandal. The franchise distanced itself from Meiyappan entirely, calling him merely an "honorary member" — a "mere cricket enthusiast" with no official role. That phrase would haunt them. The Justice Mudgal Committee, appointed by the Supreme Court in October 2013, found the opposite: Meiyappan was a CSK team official, indicted for betting and passing team information — explicitly not for fixing matches himself. Voice-matching evidence and the testimony of security personnel confirmed it. Michael Hussey later wrote in his book Underneath the Southern Cross that Srinivasan had handed control of the team to Meiyappan — directly contradicting the "mere enthusiast" line, as The Hindu noted.
And then there was the Dhoni deposition. MS Dhoni — CSK captain and also an India Cements vice-president — told the Mudgal Committee that Meiyappan "had nothing to do with the cricketing affairs of Chennai Super Kings and was a mere cricket enthusiast supporting CSK." The committee found that factually wrong, and petitioner's counsel Harish Salve told the Supreme Court that Dhoni had given a false statement amounting to a cover-up. I have to be careful here, and you should be too: no court ever found Dhoni guilty of anything, and he never faced a ban. He was accused by the petitioner's counsel of misleading the committee; he denied wrongdoing through the franchise's position. But the episode stained the cleanest image in Indian cricket, and it remains the most uncomfortable paragraph in this whole affair.
Raj Kundra — the owner who bet on his own team
On June 6, 2013, Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar made another announcement: Rajasthan Royals co-owner Raj Kundra — husband of Shilpa Shetty, holding an 11.7% stake in the franchise — had confessed to betting after an 11-hour questioning session. "He has admitted he put money on his own team... We also found he lost large sums of money through betting," Kumar said. Kundra's passport was seized and he was barred from leaving India. Police said he placed bets through his friend Umesh Goenka, who gave a formal statement under Section 164 of the CrPC. (Goenka also claimed Shilpa Shetty placed one bet through him — that was never verified and she was never charged.) The BCCI suspended Kundra on June 10, 2013, pending inquiry.
There is an important clarification that often gets lost: in a June 19, 2013 letter reported by the Times of India, Delhi Police clarified that Kundra was found involved in betting only, not match-fixing — the betting case was referred to the Jaipur police. Betting and fixing are different things, legally and morally, and conflating them is exactly how reputations get destroyed beyond what the facts support. Kundra exited the Royals' ownership in 2015 after the Lodha life ban, and as of 2026 he has been in the news litigating against the franchise's majority owner over a reported $1.63–1.65 billion stake sale — while his lifetime ban from cricket, per NDTV Profit's March 2026 reporting, remains in place.
The trial — discharged by the court, condemned by the board
On July 25, 2015, Additional Sessions Judge Neena Bansal Krishna at Delhi's Patiala House Court delivered a verdict that split this story in two. She discharged all 36 accused — the three players among them — refusing to even frame charges, on the grounds of insufficient evidence to prosecute under MCOCA and under IPC Section 420 (cheating). Sreesanth broke down in the courtroom. Delhi Police said it would challenge the order in the Delhi High Court; as far as I can verify, no final High Court verdict has been confirmed in reputable reporting since.
And here is the twist that makes this scandal unlike any other: the acquittal changed nothing on the field. The same day, the BCCI said its "decisions, based on its independent disciplinary action, shall remain unaltered." The board's position was that its own inquiry had its own standard of proof, separate from the criminal court. Whether you agree with that or not, it established a precedent that still governs cricket: a player can be cleared by a court and still be banned by the board. The two systems answer different questions — the court asks "can we prove a crime beyond reasonable doubt," the board asks "did you damage the game's reputation." In 2013's case, the board's answer was yes.
The punishments — who got banned, for how long, and the Lodha earthquake
The players' bans came first. On September 13, 2013, the BCCI Disciplinary Committee imposed lifetime bans on Sreesanth and Ankeet Chavan. Ajit Chandila was not covered by that order; his lifetime ban came later, on January 18, 2016, from a disciplinary committee headed by Shashank Manohar. All three had spent time in custody — Sreesanth and Chavan got bail in June 2013 after roughly 27 days; Chandila was granted bail on September 9, 2013.
Then came the legal long game. Sreesanth fought his ban through the courts: the Kerala High Court single judge lifted it in August 2017, a division bench restored it in October 2017, and finally the Supreme Court set aside the life ban on March 15, 2019, asking the BCCI to reconsider. BCCI Ombudsman Justice (retd) D.K. Jain (order of August 7, 2019) reduced it to seven years from September 13, 2013 — so the ban ended on September 13, 2020. Chavan's ban followed a similar path: the BCCI Ombudsman's order of May 3, 2021 reduced it to seven years from the same start date, and the BCCI formally communicated his clearance to play on June 15, 2021. Chandila's seven-year reduction ran from his later start date — his ban ended January 18, 2023.
But the earthquake was still to come, and it hit the franchises. The Supreme Court had appointed the three-member Justice R.M. Lodha Committee in January 2015 to decide the quantum of punishment. On July 14, 2015, it delivered a verdict nobody in Indian cricket will forget: Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were suspended for two years. They missed the 2016 and 2017 IPL seasons — replaced by Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions — and returned in 2018. (CSK, in the most CSK way possible, won the title on their return.) The panel found the franchises vicariously liable for the actions of their officials: Meiyappan was "the face of the owner," Kundra a part-owner. And Meiyappan and Kundra were both banned for life from involvement in any cricket matches or cricket activities. Kundra's defence — that as a UK citizen he did not know betting was illegal in India — was rejected. Neither life ban has been reduced.
One more casualty: N. Srinivasan stepped aside as BCCI president on June 2, 2013 as the probe closed in on his son-in-law. The BCCI's own two-judge panel had cleared him and CSK in July 2013, but the Supreme Court later observed that his stand on Meiyappan had been "proved wrong." He was sidelined from the BCCI during the investigation years — the most powerful man in world cricket, undone by his own family's involvement in the league he ran. You can read about the BCCI's more recent boardroom churn in our report on the postponed IPL owners' conclave — the institution never really stopped shaking from 2013.
The fallout — what cricket changed because of 2013
Scandals end; systems remain. The 2013 case rewrote how the IPL protects itself:
- The BCCI set up its own Anti-Corruption Unit in 2013, headed by Ravi Sawani, the former ICC ACSU chief — choosing to build its own unit rather than borrow the ICC's.
- Before IPL 2014, the BCCI introduced mandatory anti-corruption education for all players and staff, in multiple languages, with integrity officers attached to each team and closer coordination with the ICC's Anti-Corruption Unit. From 2015 the ACSU ran one-on-one sessions including honey-trap awareness, aimed especially at young domestic players suddenly exposed to big money and bigger temptations.
- The Mudgal Committee (reports submitted February 10, 2014) put on record that Meiyappan was a team official engaged in betting and information-passing — killing the "mere enthusiast" fiction forever.
- The Lodha verdict's vicarious-liability principle — that a franchise answers for its officials — became the template for how cricket punishes institutional corruption, not just individual players.
And the 2013 final itself, played at Eden Gardens while all of this was breaking around the league, now reads like a ghost story: Mumbai Indians beat Chennai Super Kings — the two franchises at the center of everything. MI's first title, CSK's disgrace. I sometimes wonder what the players on that field knew, and when.
Where are they now
S. Sreesanth made his competitive comeback for Kerala in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy on January 11, 2021 — 1 for 29 against Puducherry at age 37 — and continued in Kerala domestic cricket, even entering the IPL 2021 auction pool. He never returned to the IPL or to India colours. His public life has been eclectic: Bigg Boss 12 in 2018, a Bollywood debut in Aksar 2 (2017), Malayalam films, and a foray into politics — he joined the BJP in March 2016 and contested the Kerala Assembly seat from Thiruvananthapuram, losing. His current occupation is not firmly verified in recent reputable reporting; he surfaces as a cricket commentator and social-media personality.
Ankeet Chavan returned to Mumbai club cricket after his clearance in 2021, and in July 2025 the Mumbai Cricket Association appointed him head coach of the Mumbai U-14 team — he had passed his Level-1 coaching exam. Of the three, his is the quietest redemption: from the team hotel at Nariman Point to coaching fourteen-year-olds at Wankhede.
Ajit Chandila's reduced ban ended in January 2023. There is no verified return to competitive cricket; a 2026 roundup describes him as a cricket mentor and content creator, but I would mark that as weakly sourced. Gurunath Meiyappan's life ban stands, and his current whereabouts are not verified in any reputable recent source I could find. Raj Kundra, as noted, remains banned for life while fighting the Royals' ownership over their billion-dollar stake sale in the courts.
The media trial — convicted on television, discharged in court
There is a part of this story that rarely gets written about, and I think it matters more than the towel signals. For two years — from May 2013 to July 2015 — Sreesanth, Chandila and Chavan lived under a verdict the courts had not delivered. News channels ran the police's version as fact. The "towel in the trousers" became a national joke. Sreesanth, the most flamboyant of the three, was tried, convicted and sentenced in prime time long before the Patiala House Court ever saw the chargesheet. When the court finally discharged all 36 accused, the headlines were smaller, the debates shorter, the apologies nonexistent.
I am not asking you to feel sorry for them — they chose to live in cricket's most scrutinized spotlight, and the BCCI's independent disciplinary process, which is a legitimate sporting jurisdiction, found against them. But consider the mechanics of what happened: the Delhi Police held press conferences before the investigation was complete. Commissioner Neeraj Kumar described the signals, the amounts, the underworld links — all of it attributed to the police case, all of it reported by reputable outlets with the proper "police claimed" framing, and all of it absorbed by the public as established fact. By the time Judge Neena Bansal Krishna ruled there was insufficient evidence to even frame charges, the narrative had been set in concrete for two years. A discharge after that kind of coverage is not an acquittal in the public mind; it is a technicality. And that is the asymmetry the media never answers for.
Compare it with how the boardroom figures were treated. Meiyappan admitted to betting crores and walked out on bail in ten days. Kundra confessed to betting on his own team and was suspended pending inquiry — then litigated his way through the next decade as a businessman. Srinivasan stepped aside and eventually returned to cricket administration's orbit. The players got the perp-walk treatment; the owners got the press-release treatment. I am not claiming a conspiracy — the police had a case against the players and pursued it, and the Mumbai Police pursued Meiyappan and Kundra too — but the optics of justice in this scandal were brutally classed. The men who bowled the overs were destroyed on television. The men who owned the teams hired lawyers.
There is a lesson here for how we consume cricket scandals now, because there will be more of them. The 2013 case taught the media that a police press conference is content gold — and it taught the rest of us nothing about skepticism. Every subsequent fixing allegation, in every league, gets the same treatment: the accusation is the story, the verdict is a footnote. If the 2013 discharge taught you anything, let it be this: read the second headline, not just the first. The first headline tells you who was arrested. The second tells you what was proven. In 2013, the distance between those two headlines was the whole story.
My analysis — what 2013 really taught cricket
I have spent this whole article being careful about what was proven and what was merely claimed, and now I will tell you what I actually think. First: the 2013 scandal was never really about three bowlers. Sreesanth, Chandila and Chavan were, at best, the visible tip of a betting economy that had grown around the IPL like ivy around a wall. The police described a mastermind sitting abroad and named Dawood Ibrahim in the chargesheet — the system was the story, and the system was never put on trial. Three cricketers were arrested, paraded, banned; the betting networks that allegedly bankrolled the whole thing remain, to this day, largely untouched by Indian law enforcement. That is the uncomfortable arithmetic of this scandal.
Second: the acquittal-versus-ban split is cricket's permanent wound. A court said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. The BCCI said its bans stood anyway. Both positions are defensible — criminal courts demand proof beyond reasonable doubt; a sport's governing body must protect the game's reputation on a lower standard — but the result is that three men carry a corruption stain that no court ever confirmed. I covered the Lord's 2010 case where the evidence was overwhelming — prison sentences, recorded cash, guilty pleas. The contrast is instructive: 2010 was proven corruption; 2013 was alleged corruption that the legal system could not prove and the cricket system punished anyway. If you want to understand why players today are terrified of even being seen near a bookie, 2013 is why.
Third: the real villains of 2013 were not on the field. Meiyappan passed team information while insisting he was "just a gambler." Kundra bet on his own team. Srinivasan ran the BCCI while his son-in-law ran betting operations through a Bollywood actor. The Lodha Committee understood this — that is why it suspended the franchises, not just the individuals. Vicarious liability was the boldest idea to come out of this mess, and it is the reason no IPL owner today will touch betting with a ten-foot pole. The message landed: in the IPL, the men in suits are watched as closely as the men in whites.
Fourth, and this is the one I keep coming back to: the 2013 scandal is the strongest argument for legalizing and regulating betting in India — an argument the country still refuses to have. Everything in this story happened in the shadows because betting is illegal: the coded phone calls, the hotel-room cash, the underworld's alleged involvement. The Mudgal and Lodha committees both noted, in their way, that the money would exist whether cricket acknowledged it or not. Legal, regulated betting would not have stopped a bent over — but it would have given the money a paper trail, and paper trails are what catch fixers. Thirteen years on, India still has no regulated sports-betting framework, and the underground economy that 2013 exposed is bigger than ever. We banned two teams for two years and changed nothing about the money.
Finally: cricket survived, and that is both reassuring and damning. CSK came back and won the IPL in 2018. The league is now worth billions — the IPL's commercial machine has never been stronger. Sreesanth bowled again for Kerala. Chavan coaches kids. The machine absorbed the scandal and kept printing money. That is the real lesson of 2013: cricket's economy is now so large that even its biggest corruption crisis was, in the end, a two-year interruption. Whether that means the sport is resilient or that it simply stopped caring about anything but the money — I will leave that for you to decide in the comments.
Frequently asked questions
Was Sreesanth proven guilty of spot-fixing?
No. The Delhi Police charged him, but on July 25, 2015 the Patiala House Court discharged him and all other accused for insufficient evidence. His BCCI ban — later reduced to seven years, ending September 13, 2020 — was a separate disciplinary action and was never lifted by the court verdict.
Why were Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals suspended?
On July 14, 2015, the Justice Lodha Committee suspended both franchises for two years (missing the 2016 and 2017 IPL seasons) on the principle of vicarious liability — holding the teams responsible for the betting-related misconduct of their officials, Gurunath Meiyappan (CSK) and Raj Kundra (RR). Both also received lifetime bans from cricket activities.
Did MS Dhoni face any punishment in the 2013 scandal?
No. Dhoni's deposition to the Mudgal Committee — calling Meiyappan a "mere cricket enthusiast" — was contradicted by the committee's findings, and the petitioner's counsel accused him of misleading the panel. But no court or disciplinary body ever charged or banned Dhoni over the matter.
Is Sreesanth playing cricket now?
He returned to competitive cricket for Kerala in January 2021 after his ban ended in September 2020, playing domestic T20 and one-day cricket. He has not returned to the IPL or international cricket.
What is the difference between the 2010 and 2013 fixing scandals?
The 2010 Lord's case (Butt, Asif, Amir) ended in criminal convictions and prison sentences — the evidence was overwhelming. The 2013 IPL case ended in a full discharge by the court for lack of evidence, with the BCCI's sporting bans surviving independently. One was proven in court; the other was punished only by the sport.
Can banned players like Sreesanth ever return to the IPL?
In theory, once a ban expires a player is eligible — Sreesanth entered the IPL 2021 auction pool. In practice, no franchise picked him, and at 42 the window has closed. Eligibility and employability are different things.
What do you remember about the 2013 scandal — and do you think the BCCI was right to keep the bans after the court acquittal? Tell me in the comments; I read every one.
Sources
- Reuters / Cricbuzz — Delhi Police press conference, May 16, 2013 (arrests, signals, bookie network)
- ESPNcricinfo — trial court order summary, July 26, 2015 (Rs 60 lakh figure, Jiju Janardhanan, Chandresh Patel)
- NDTV Sports — May 16–17, 2013 (Chavan over details; claimed confession)
- Cricbuzz — "Commissioner reveals explosive details" (Chandila Rs 20 lakh advance)
- Indian Express — May 23, 2013 (Chandila Rs 49 lakh figure)
- The Hindu / Indian Express — May–June 2013 (Meiyappan and Vindu arrests, bail June 4)
- AFP via Financial Express — June 7, 2013 (Kundra betting confession)
- Times of India — June 19, 2013 letter (Kundra betting only, not fixing)
- Deccan Chronicle / PTI; Tribune / AFP — July 25, 2015 (Patiala House discharge, Judge Neena Bansal Krishna)
- Indian Express / Business Standard — November 2014 (Mudgal Committee findings)
- Cricbuzz / Scroll — July 14, 2015 (Lodha Committee verdict: two-year suspensions, life bans)
- The Statesman / IANS; Business Standard — August 2019 (Sreesanth ban reduced to seven years)
- Cricbuzz / Indian Express — June 2021 (Chavan ban reduced, clearance)
- Cricbuzz / News18 — January 2016 / February 2023 (Chandila lifetime ban; seven-year reduction ended January 18, 2023)
- SportsTak — July 2025 (Ankeet Chavan appointed Mumbai U-14 head coach)
- NDTV Profit — March 2026 (Kundra lifetime ban remains in place)