Quick Edit | In the hall of infamy

Throughout the history of cricket, teams—and not franchises— have usually been the ones making history. The Kochi franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) may well be remembered for breaking this trend. On Thursday, PTI reported that the franchise’s investors, unable to resolve a spat over shareholding patterns, had decided to call off their IPL venture. In the process, the Kochi steamroller has felled a controversial but able cricket administrator, queered the pitch for two other IPL teams, shamed a bright young minister to quit his post, put the then minister’s now wife under sudden media glare, and given a great batsman of yore more trouble than Malcolm Marshall’s bouncers. All this may be a sign that in the commercial world of modern cricket, the business matters more than the sport. But for future historians, the Kochi episode should be a reminder not of bad cricket, but of plain bad business.