IPL withdraws controversial SMS contest

The IPL has withdrawn a text-messaging competition in which users predicted the outcome of each ball of an over for cash prizes. The game had come in for strong criticism from India's sports minister MS Gill over its similarity with gambling.

"There was no formal complaint about the game but the minister's views were taken into account and the organisers have withdrawn the game," Rajiv Shukla, a member of the IPL's governing council and a senior BCCI official, told PTI.

Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive, said he was pleased with the decision. "I had written to the IPL to inquire on that particular game," Lorgat told Cricinfo. "The developers of that game had come to see us some two years back, but we didn't have enough information on how it worked, so I had written to the IPL requesting for some more information. I'm personally pleased that they have recognised that perhaps it's not the right time to introduce something like that. Simply because I didn't know the details of the game, that was the discomfort."

It's understood that the IPL and the game's promoters discontinued the game two days ago and are currently studying the legal aspects surrounding it before a final decision is taken.

Gill had last week denounced the SMS game - though he did not refer to it by name - saying it amounted to gambling. "I see the commercial use of cricket for business gains that is going on. I am concerned at knowledgeable comments from serious followers of cricket about the latest venture of encouraging viewers to make ball by ball predictions of runs scored for economic gain in the shape of cash prizes," he said in a statement. "This is viewed as 'openly encouraging gambling and betting', which official bodies do not resort to, even in countries where betting is legal."

He had reminded the BCCI of its position in the Indian sports spectrum. "The actions of the BCCI are bound to impact the thinking in other sports, some time or the other. We have already had, sometime back, a match-fixing scandal in the game. It seems the ICC had expressed concerns about such possibilities, in the IPL."