The summer cricket lost its innocence: the 2013 IPL betting case, explained

For all its noise and money, the Indian Premier League had spent its first five years selling a simple promise: that what happened on the field was real. On 14 July 2015, a panel of three retired judges handed down the punishment for the season that broke that promise. Two of the league’s founding franchises were suspended, two men were banished from the game for life, and the tournament emerged smaller, more regulated and permanently changed.

What the Lodha Committee decided

The Justice R.M. Lodha Committee, set up by the Supreme Court of India, suspended the Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals from the IPL for two years. It also imposed life bans on Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra from any cricket activity governed by the BCCI. The suspensions would keep both franchises out of the 2016 and 2017 seasons.

The verdict closed a case that had run for more than two years and reached the highest court in the country. To understand it, you have to go back to the middle of the 2013 season.

How it began: May 2013

On 16 May 2013, Delhi Police arrested three Rajasthan Royals players — S. Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila — on suspicion of spot-fixing during IPL matches, alleging they had taken money to concede a pre-arranged number of runs in specific overs. The arrests detonated the tournament while it was still being played.

The scandal widened within days. Actor Vindoo Dara Singh was arrested on 21 May, and on 24 May Mumbai Police arrested Gurunath Meiyappan on charges that included betting, cheating and criminal conspiracy. Meiyappan’s role mattered enormously, because he was closely tied to the ownership of the Chennai Super Kings and was the son-in-law of the then BCCI president, N. Srinivasan.

Attention soon turned to Raj Kundra, a co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals, who came under police scrutiny over alleged betting. The case now touched both a marquee franchise and the very top of the board. On 2 June 2013, Srinivasan stepped aside from day-to-day BCCI duties amid the outcry.

The Supreme Court steps in

What kept the 2013 case from fading like earlier controversies was that it did not stay with the police. In October 2013 the Supreme Court appointed an inquiry headed by Justice Mukul Mudgal to investigate the allegations arising from the season.

The Mudgal Committee’s work was decisive. In its findings, it established that Meiyappan was a CSK team official — not, as had been argued, merely an enthusiastic fan — and held that the allegations of betting against both Meiyappan and Kundra were proved. The panel submitted an interim report in February 2014 and a final report in November 2014.

On 22 January 2015, the Supreme Court constituted the Lodha Committee, chaired by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha alongside two other retired judges, and tasked it specifically with deciding the punishment for those the Mudgal panel had named. Its ruling arrived on 14 July 2015.

A timeline of the case

Date	Event
16 May 2013	Three Rajasthan Royals players arrested for spot-fixing
24 May 2013	Gurunath Meiyappan arrested on betting-related charges
Oct 2013	Supreme Court appoints the Mudgal Committee
Nov 2014	Mudgal panel submits its final report
22 Jan 2015	Lodha Committee constituted to decide punishment
14 Jul 2015	CSK and RR suspended two years; life bans for Meiyappan and Kundra

What it did and did not establish

It is worth being precise about the scope of these findings. The betting charges against Meiyappan and Kundra, as team officials, were what the courts and the Mudgal panel held to be proved, and it was on that basis that the Lodha Committee acted against the two franchises and the two men. The separate criminal cases involving the arrested players followed their own, longer paths through the courts.

The consequences reshaped the league. For 2016 and 2017, two replacement sides — the Gujarat Lions and Rising Pune Supergiant — filled the gap left by the suspended franchises. Both CSK and RR returned in 2018 after serving their bans. But the deeper legacy of 2015 was structural: the Lodha reforms that grew out of this case rewrote how Indian cricket governs itself. The summer of 2013 was the moment the IPL stopped assuming its own innocence — and 14 July 2015 was the day the bill came due.

Dates and findings in this article are drawn from the Supreme Court’s Mudgal and Lodha committee proceedings as reported by The Hindu, The Indian Express and other outlets cited above.