All posts tagged: Lalit Modi ANI interview 2026

Modi on IND players’ reactions to inaugural T20 WC

Modi on IND players’ reactions to inaugural T20 WC

Published by Webster

3 min readJun 4, 2026 09:40 PM IST Former Indian Premier League (IPL) chairperson Lalit Modi said that he had personally approached the Indian cricketers in the dressing room during their 2007 England tour, urging them to participate in the inaugural T20 World Cup. India’s tour of England took place from July 19 to September 8, 2007, comprising a three-match Test series and a seven-match ODI series, just days before the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 got underway on September 11. While senior stars such as Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly were part of the squad for the England tour, the team selected for the T20 World Cup featured a younger core, with several experienced players absent. Led by MS Dhoni, India’s squad included players such as Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Dinesh Karthik, RP Singh, Irfan Pathan and others. The team ended up winning the whole thing and a year later, the IPL was born and ushered in the boom of T20 cricket. Modi also said that the format was met with …

‘Dawood Ibrahim took 3 hits at me’

‘Dawood Ibrahim took 3 hits at me’

Published by Webster

4 min readJun 4, 2026 08:28 PM IST Former Indian Premier League (IPL) commissioner Lalit Modi has alleged that he was forced to quit cricket administration after receiving threats from fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. The 62-year-old claimed that three “hits” were ordered against him and alleged that his son was kidnapped in London. “It is one of the biggest reasons. He (Dawood) took three hits at me. Dawood himself said this. He missed three times. The reason was that I didn’t look the other way when they wanted to fix matches. They offered me hundreds of millions of dollars to look the other way. If you look at the first three years, when I ran the IPL, there was no fixing. It wasn’t liked by the mafia,” Modi told ANI. Modi claimed he was targeted because he refused to allow match-fixing and betting interests to influence the IPL, alleging that criminal syndicates lost money when the tournament was successfully relocated to South Africa. The comments come years after IPL 2009 was moved from India …