Four Corners: Aug 10

Monday’s Four Corners looks at “how India hijacked the game of cricket, and how Australia helped.”

As the Ashes play out in England, Four Corners takes you into the backroom power plays of the cricket elite where an audacious coup has delivered extraordinary power to India, at the expense of smaller cricketing nations.

Featuring interviews with the titans of the game, the program exposes how India has engineered a massive shift in influence, with huge ramifications for how and where the game is played. India now virtually dictates the international cricket calendar.

We tell the inside story of how India, with the co-operation of Australia and England, forged a deal to control the future of cricket and the lion’s share of the billions in revenue it generates.

Through exclusive interviews with the key participants, the program tells the inside story of the negotiations that led to the takeover.

The program outlines the tactics used to divide and conquer any opposition to The Big Three – India, Australia and England. The result has been a financial windfall for the three nations, but cricket, particularly in Test match form, may be the loser.

The man behind the coup is far from a household name. The camera-shy head of cricket’s international governing body, the Indian representative N Srinivasan. In a rare television interview he justifies the power he wields.

His arch rival is the marketing wizard Lalit Modi, the man behind the Indian Premier League. He is at the centre of a publicity storm in India where he stands accused of money laundering, an allegation he denies. In an exclusive interview he foreshadows a plan to take on The Big Three cricketing nations at their own game.

Monday, August 10 at 8:30pm on ABC