IPL 2012 is back and the big team owners are busy player-shopping at the IPL Bazaar. This time we saw 144 cricketers from all over the world go under the hammer and I should say the team owners really made some smart choices this time. The auction had everything a James Hadley Chase’ book would literally have right from a strong beginning to that thrill, drive, drama and a bag full of surprises!
IPL 2012 brought in some fresh ideas like extending the squad size from 30 to 33 players including 11 foreigner cricketers, allowing the franchises to spend an additional $ 2 million on their team for this auction. Though the squad size was increased, I expected a team to only land up with a maximum of 20-25 players in their squad. But, by the pace by which Mumbai Indian’s team owner Nita Ambani picked players in quick succession to utilize her full squad strength of 33 players, I was surprised! At a point it seemed as if Mumbai Indians picked players without any strategy while Deccan Chargers were busy over-strategising putting their heavy thinking caps on!
This particular player auction was necessitated by the termination of Kochi Tuskers Kerala franchise. The franchise was terminated by the BCCI for breaching its terms of agreement. More than half of the Kochi players were brought into the auction so other teams have a chance to pick players who interested them. Among them who played for Kochi and who turned up for the auctions were VVS Laxman, Ravindra Jadeja, Muttiah Muralitharan, Mahela Jayawardena and Brendon McCullum. The rest of the pool is made up of players who were undrafted last year. One such player is Graeme Swann whose base price was as high as $400,000 but sadly Swann had no takers and so will not have an opportunity to swim in the IPL 2012 waters.
There were quite a few surprises in this auction. Ravindra Jadeja remained the highest bid player of the 2012 IPL auctions bagging a full purse $ 2 million. Jadeja, whose base price was just $100,000, went to the Chennai Super Kings after both the teams Chennai Super Kings and Deccan Chargers decided to bid their maximum on the Saurashtra cricketer. This Shane Warne’s “Rock star” cricketer performed really well last season piling up 283 runs with a strike rate of 124.12 and taking 8 wickets at a good economy rate. Last season’s Kochi skipper Mahela Jayawardena also had a good day at office going to Delhi Daredevils for $1.4 million. Mahela joins yet another new recruit at the franchise this season along with Kevin Pietersen. Muralitharan who played for both Chennai and Kochi in the previous editions of the IPL, this time will stay with the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Another surprise was Bengaluru’s $ 1 million claim for Kochi’s Vinay Kumar whose base price was just $100,000.
King Khan’s Kolkata Knight Riders snapped the swashbuckling New Zealand cricketer Brendon McCullum for $900,000. KKR also secured the services of the West Indies off-spinner Sunil Narine for $700,000 which was a pleasant surprise! While RP Singh went to the Mumbai Indians for $600,000, the more aggressive Sreesanth went to Rajasthan Royals for his base price of $400,000. Pakistani Cricketer Azhar Mahmood, the man with now a UK passport will play for Kings XI Punjab for $200,000.
Wristy Indian batsman VVS Laxman who was a big disappointment with the bat during the recent test series against Australia went unsold in the auction along with Ian Bell, Ravi Bopara, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Adrian Barath and our very own Mark Boucher. After repeatedly seeing veteran cricketers being left out of the squad, I think the team owners prefer Young guns to Old legs!
Sri Lankan spinners Ajantha Mendis and Rangana Herath too remained unsold failing to attract bids as did James Anderson, Peter Siddle and Ravi Rampaul. Ireland’s 2011 World-Cup hero Kevin O’Brien also failed to grab bidders.
Another big shocker of the day was the withdrawal of Sahara India from the sponsorship deal with both the BCCI and the Pune Warriors. Due to the unavailability of their marquee player Yuvraj Singh, Sahara requested the IPL if his bid of $1.8 million could be added to their overall purse for the players’ auction and this request was immediately turned down by IPL. Consequently, Sahara India pulled out just hours before the player auction for the fifth edition of the IPL and in fact there were none from Pune Warriors Team management for the Players auction.
The fourth season of IPL has so far returned the lowest TRP, the disaster with the television viewership, Team India’s poor performance in the Test rubber against Australia and England, surprisingly more than a few empty stands in the ground – Sahara India has snapped all ties with the Board at a time when Cricket is not at its pinnacle you can say!
Two Days after Sahara India decided to pull-out as a sponsor of the Indian Cricket team it seems they now have signed a 50-crore deal with Hockey India! Looks like, Cricket’s loss is Hockey’s gain!
Meanwhile let’s wait and watch if BCCI is able to make efforts to bring back the corporate giant and retain its financial backing! On the other hand, IPL will have to sort the Pune Warriors issue and it remains to be seen if all these situations can win a race against time to get things in order!
