The IPL spot fixing saga is getting murkier and murkier, with the scandal knocking at the BCCI chief’s door step. But I am more curious of the way the fans have reacted to this scandal over the last week ever since Sreesanth, Chandila and Chavan were arrested.

The day after the scandal broke, Hyderabad Sunrisers took on Rajasthan Royals in Hyderabad. The ESPN Cricinfo correspondent was in the stadium to report on the fans’ reaction to the scandal. Unsurprisingly, the fans couldn’t give a damn about the scandal and turned out in huge numbers to support their team. They were there to have a blast. The spot fixing scandal could well be happening in Mars. There seemed to be a complete dissonance between the self-righteous fulminations of our TV anchors and the frenzy of the fans at the stadium.

This reminds me of similar incident from the world of football. Though as a disclaimer it has to be said that the way Europeans ‘consume’ football is very different from the way we do IPL. Elements of spectacle and entertainment do find their place in football but not to the extent they do in IPL T20 cricket. Even Barcelona’s famed ‘tiki-taka’ slick passing, artistic game is seen more in aesthetic light. Now aesthetics and IPL are as far away from each other as Rihanna is from Gandhiji.

But back to the scandals. A few years ago Italian football was rocked by a bribery scandal where five tops clubs including Juventus were accused of bribing referees to swing matches in their favour. The Italian federation cracked down hard. Top officials were sent to jail, faced bans and penalties. Though the four other clubs got away lightly, Juventus were stripped of two of their recent league titles and were even relegated for one season to the Serie B – the second division of the Italian.

But were the fans outraged by the behaviour of their club? Were they disgusted by the shenanigans of the club officials? Did they turn their backs on the clubs in protest?

Hardly. Weirdly enough, this sordid saga seemed to bind the fans and the club together in a tighter embrace. They turned out in ever larger numbers every week when their club slummed it out in the lower division through the season and broke into wild celebrations when the team returned to Serie A -- the top flight -- at the end of that season.

So, BCCI officials may well be feeling this scandal will go away soon enough and come IPL VII, the fans will be ready to turn out in huge numbers again, set for a bigger, glitzier, brasher edition. And who knows they may well be spot on.

But given that entertainment has always been at the heart of IPL, let's admit that this scandal has only made Edition 6 vastly more 'entertaining'. The way we have gleefully lapped up this scandal, in print and on television, only goes to prove this.

But if for some reason IPL implodes and collapses under its own weight, I for one won't feel sorry to see its demise, though the likelihood of that happening is remote given the amount of money riding on it. Six IPLs of 'cricketainment' and look at where we are.

And summers again without the IPL tamasha would be splendid. Watching the odd Test match played in England in summer, with Bob Willis in the commentary box speaking precisely four words every 10 minutes in his laidback style, would indeed be welcome relief.

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