It’s been a season to forget for Real Madrid, the Spanish giants who are doomed to finish a second consecutive year without a significant trophy. Sunday’s 0-2 loss in the El Classico to Barcelona at Camp Nou confirmed their great rivals as the La Liga champions while Real have been left to pick up the pieces.

Among the pieces that need picking up are a major bust-up involving Aurelien Tchouameni and Federico Valverde. It wasn’t just another bust-up, but an alleged physical coming together that sent the latter to hospital for treatment to a head injury and forced him to miss Sunday’s encounter. The pair was fired 500,000 euros each by the club. It has been reported that they first got into an altercation during training on Wednesday, then continued their skirmishes the following day during and after practice. It was during a dressing-room showdown that Valverde picked up the head injury which he sought to downplay, saying, “I accidentally hit a table during the argument, causing a small cut on my forehead that required a routine visit to the hospital. At no point did my teammate hit me, and I didn’t hit him either.”

The players involved have subsequently apologised, acknowledging their errors and seeking forgiveness. Understandably, their shenanigans haven’t endeared them to their fans, already smarting from a sub-par season, or their manager, Alvaro Arbeloa.

Act of disloyalty

But while Arbeloa is unimpressed by their actions, he is even more incensed at how happenings within the confines of the dressing room made their way into public domain. “For things that happen in the dressing room to be leaked seems to me a betrayal and an act of disloyalty to this badge,” he said. “I had a teammate who picked up a golf club and hit another with it. What happens in the Real Madrid dressing room should stay in the Real Madrid dressing room and that is what hurts me the most.”

One can relate to the angst of the Real manager. The dressing room in any sport is considered the players’ sanctuary, a safe space where they can let off steam (sometimes quite literally, we shall come to that soon) and be themselves. Operating in high-pressure situations under extreme stress with the stakes incredibly and unforgivingly high, it is impossible for the protagonists not to feel the strain. They need an outlet, away from prying eyes, to release pent-up emotion, which is exactly why the dressing room is sacrosanct and out of bounds for those not directly involved with the team.

Sometimes, it becomes impossible to leave what happens in the changing room behind and continue with life as if all is hunky-dory, but that’s another matter altogether. As for dressing room leaks, how does one stop that? Ultimately, it boils down to the integrity of each individual, their sense of right and wrong, and an empathy that has to be organic and inborn, not drilled through extraneous means.

Dressing-room secrets have a way of making their way into public space, no matter what. In team sports where, increasingly, there are as many members of the support staff as there are playing personnel, it is impossible to ‘police’ effectively. If someone wants to tell someone else not privy to the dressing room about the goings-on within closed doors, what can anyone do, really? Indian cricket itself is replete with tales of convenient and salacious ‘leaks’ and ‘plants’ that invariably tend to revolve around groupism, internal politics, about differences between players or between coaches and players, the works…

The million-dollar question

How private should a dressing room be, one wonders. In the sense that when things happen inside a dressing room with glass walls and therefore in full public view, is it an encroachment on an individual/team’s private space?

We are talking here about the Riyan Parag vaping incident within the confines of the Rajasthan Royals dressing room nearly a fortnight back, beamed to millions at home on live television after the camera inadvertently caught the Rajasthan skipper nonchalantly using the banned (by Indian authorities) device. Vaping, or the use of e-cigarettes, is illegal in India under The Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act (PECA) 2019. The Act prohibits the production, sale, purchase, import, export and advertisement of e-cigarettes/vapes in India, and violations can lead to imprisonment and hefty fines.

Furthermore, electronic devices – which is essentially what a vape is – including but not restricted to those with recording and communication capabilities are largely prohibited in the dressing room, necessitating all team members to deposit their cell phones with team managers on arrival at the ground. Which begs the question — how did Parag/someone else sneak a vape into the dressing room?

Then again, what’s an IPL season without drama and controversy and debate and counterthrusts? The action on the field has been compelling as always, and sometimes unprecedentedly so – multiple 15-ball half-centuries by a 15-year-old (Vaibhav Sooryavanshi), an IPL record-equalling 13-ball half-ton by a relatively unknown domestic batter (Urvil Patel), a record score by an Indian batter (K.L. Rahul), the presence of a familiar name at the top of the wicket-taking leader-board (Bhuvneshwar Kumar).

As Season 19 hurtles towards the business end, the heat is only likely to increase. Already, two teams have been eliminated from the playoff race (Mumbai Indians and Lucknow Super Giants), while there is a logjam at the top and some early stragglers (former champions Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders) are making a spirited push to sneak into the top four. Every night holds the promise of a grand spectacle and most nights don’t disappoint. The IPL, however dismissed in certain quarters, is an addictive commodity which sparks withdrawal symptoms every year immediately after its final act, which is scheduled this year for Sunday, May 31.

Controversy and IPL seem forever to have gone hand-in-glove, starting from Slapgate featuring Harbhajan Singh and S. Sreesanth in 2008 to the ongoing edition where Rajasthan Royals, more than anyone else, have been in the spotlight for various reasons. For the right reasons when it comes to Sooryavanshi and Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jofra Archer and Donovan Ferreira, but not necessarily for only the right reasons, as the Parag vape and the unauthorised use of a cell phone in the team dugout by long-standing manager Romi Bhinder will testify.

Bhinder is no IPL novice. As team manager, he should be more aware than most of the dos and don’ts; primary among the latter is the use of mobile instruments. A month or so back, Bhinder was slapped with a fine of ₹1 lakh for contravening protocols and using his cell phone in the dugout. No matter what the provocation was, there can be no excuse for this blatant violation which surely deserved more than just a token slap on the wrist which, apart from the paltry fine, entailed an official warning.

Not long thereafter came the Parag vape. Like Bhinder, Parag too has been involved with the IPL for ages. The Guwahati-born all-rounder is only 24, but he is an IPL veteran, having been signed by Rajasthan ahead of the 2019 season. It wasn’t until his sixth season with Rajasthan, in 2024, that he finally met the expectations of the leadership group, scoring a franchise-high 573 runs and 33 sixes.

Parag was rewarded not just with an India white-ball call-up but was also retained by Rajasthan for ₹14 crore and bestowed with the captaincy on a stand-in basis last year when Sanju Samson served initially as only an impact player before being ruled out with an abdominal strain.

With Samson being traded out to Chennai Super Kings ahead of IPL 2026, Parag became the full-time skipper, a recognition of his long association with the franchise and a show of faith because clearly, they have identified him as one to lead the fortunes of the side for the foreseeable future.

His supreme indifference to rules therefore is a little disturbing, given how much has been invested in him. Some have insisted that Parag’s mistake was being seen as doing what he did more than what he did itself. This isn’t a diatribe on morality, so we shall not venture into that territory (in any case, how many of us can truly cast the first stone?). What is in black-and-white is gross disregard for rules and laws, which must come with attendant penalties and act as a deterrent to those that might be inclined to indulge in such acts in public eye.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India prides itself on being a guardian of sorts, but it must ask itself if it has set the right example by slapping just a 25% match-fee fine and one demerit point sanction on Parag for breaching Article 2.21 of the IPL’s Code of Conduct, which relates to ‘conduct that brings the game into disrepute’. According to the board, this was a Level 1 (lowest grade) offence. Hmmm, you say…

Within a few days, another India international, Yuzvendra Chahal, was accidentally filmed vaping inside an aircraft, no less, by Arshdeep Singh, his Punjab Kings teammate who is prolific on social media with his (often humorous) vlogs. In March, leg-spinner Chahal revealed that he had been off alcohol for six months to boost his fitness and performance, earning plaudits for his honesty, discipline and commitment. And now this. Which raises a more alarming query: How did he manage to get the device into an aircraft despite the multiple levels of security checks at airports?

The BCCI has been moved enough to dash off a comprehensive list of what is acceptable and what is not to the franchises within the last week, with a specific focus on the entry of unauthorised individuals into the hotel rooms of players and support staff. Clearly, it is seized of the need for the IPL to not just be a tournament adhering to the highest standards of behaviour but also to be seen as precisely that. There will be infractions because that is but natural. How one responds to that and what deterrents are invoked become more relevant in such cases.

And oh, we agree with Arbeloa that what happens in the dressing room must stay in the dressing room. Unless the whole world has witnessed it, of course.