M.S. Dhoni's 11 Year Battle for Match-Fixing Justice Finally Goes to Court (Free Article)
The Indian cricketing legend is suing news companies, a journalist, and a police officer for allegedly dragging his name through the mud.
In 2014, M.S. Dhoni filed a lawsuit for defamation in Madras, India, against everyone he claimed had unjustly labelled him as a match-fixer. The list of culprits extended from major media company, Zee Media, the News Nation channel, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, and retired police officer, G. Sampath Kumar.
Dhoni claimed that this group had unfairly associated his name with the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) 2013 betting and match-fixing scandal.
On August 11, 2025, after more than a decade of procedural delays, the Madras High Court decided that Dhoni’s lawsuit would go to trial. He is seeking a total of 100 crore rupees (9.8 million euros) in damages.
But why did it take so long?
The roots of this case date back to 2013, when three players from the Rajasthan Royals were arrested for spot-fixing and others, including the team principal of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) were detained for illegal betting. Both teams received a two-season ban from the league.
As captain of CSK at the time, Dhoni was uncomfortably close to the scandal, despite no evidence that he was personally implicated. He was never charged or officially accused, and his name was fully cleared by later inquiries. During his team’s two-year ban, Dhoni was allowed to continue his career in Pune before returning to CSK.
Yet in the frenzied media atmosphere of early 2014, Dhoni claims his name and reputation were tarnished by “false and malicious” reports.
The police officer, Kumar, had been one of those investigating the betting racket and testified before the Mudgal Committee, a judicial panel probing the IPL scandal.
The spark was a series of “false and malicious” media reports in February 2014, which Dhoni alleges were aimed at tarnishing him. Suspended Tamil Nadu police officer G. Sampath Kumar had investigated a betting racket and deposed before the Mudgal Committee (a Supreme Court-appointed panel probing the IPL scandal).
Kumar’s statements indicated bookmakers had mentioned Dhoni's involvement. This allegation gained traction in February 2014 when India Today published extracts of Kumar’s deposition. Kumar had claimed that Dhoni had prior knowledge of the plans to fix IPL matches and had been directly approached to participate in the plot.
In subsequent days, Zee News, then-anchored by Sudhir Chaudhary, and News Nation aired debates and reports built around these allegations. But according to Dhoni’s suit, the media coverage painted a picture of him being complicit in his team’s wrongdoing. This, his lawyers wrote, “devastated [his] reputation and image in the eyes of millions of fans” and made him “an object of hate and ridicule to the general public.”
Did it?
That’s very subjective.
Prior to the IPL scandal, Dhoni was already an icon in India. Earning the moniker “Captain Cool,” he had led the Indian cricket team to victory in the 2007 T20 World Cup, the 2011 Cricket World Cup, and the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy. He won the IPL five times with Chennai Super Kings, twice before the scandal, and three times after.
No brands or endorsements dropped him and he continued to have the support of India’s cricket establishment and his teammates.
He was inducted into India’s Cricket Hall of Fame in June 2025.
But Dhoni described intense personal trauma and stress, describing this period as “the most difficult phase of my life” in an interview.
His reputation was likely bolstered by early judicial support for his case. In March 2014, Justice S. Tamilvanan found merit in Dhoni’s complaint and granted an interim injunction restraining Zee and News Nation from publishing or broadcasting any content linking Dhoni to the scandal.
“I am of the view that there is a prima facie case and the balance of convenience is in favour of the plaintiff,” the judge observed.
Why has there been such a long stalemate then?
The accused media firms did not back down quietly. Zee Media publicly rebutted Dhoni’s allegations, arguing they never intended to malign the cricketer and that they were merely reporting information in the public domain.
The channel pointed out that, by February 2014, Dhoni had not been officially exonerated yet and that the scandal was still under investigation. Their filings claimed that Dhoni was trying to “gag the media” and that Kumar’s testimony naming Dhoni was published by other outlets and corroborated by the police officer on television. Essentially, Zee’s stance was that they reported on allegations without declaring Dhoni guilty, and that a public figure like him should endure such discussion until cleared. News Nation took a similar line.
The ensuing courtroom chess match stalled the case for years. The defendants filed a slew of challenges, questions, and objections that kept the suit entangled in procedural knots.
For example, Kumar, the police officer, took seven years to file his written statement of defense.
But a unique twist came when Kumar finally did so. In his statement, he brought up new allegations, including that Indian courts had suppressed evidence in favour of Dhoni.
The cricket captain promptly slapped Kumar with a criminal contempt petition. In late 2023, the Madras High Court found Kumar guilty of contempt, sentencing him to 15 days in jail.
What finally brought the case to trial?
Throughout this process, Dhoni has remained determined to clear his name. He even affirmed in August that he would personally take the stand and would be available for examination and cross-examination between October and December 2025.
To avoid the media frenzy this would cause, Justice C.V. Karthikeyan, the judge in charge of the case, appointed an advocate-commissioner to record the cricketer’s testimony at a secure location.
The trial is set to happen later this year.
Is there precedent for such defamation trials over match-fixing claims?
Two main ones in cricket.
India’s first World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev faced match-fixing accusations at the turn of the millennium. A former teammate, Manoj Prabhakar, and others alleged Dev had offered bribes to fix a match in 1994. In response, Dev vehemently denied the claims and even announced plans to file a ₹10 crore defamation suit (₹100 million) against the accusers, including ex-cricket official I.S. Bindra and news outlet CNN, which aired Bindra’s interview. An inquiry cleared Dev’s name and the lawsuit was dropped.
New Zealand all-rounder Chris Cairns also took on a prominent accuser in court and won in 2012. In 2010, IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi publicly alleged on Twitter that Cairns had fixed matches in a 2008 cricket league. Cairns sued Modi for libel in the High Court of England, and won £90,000 in damages in 2012 after the court ruled that Modi “singularly failed” to back up his match-fixing claims with evidence.
Fittingly, the judge in that case noted how an unfounded charge of match-fixing “entirely destroys” a player’s reputation.