At a reserve price of Rs. two crore, Mahela Jayawardene was the second player on the block. Just that when auctioneer Richard Madley mentioned the former Sri Lankan captain’s name, the room lapsed into silence.
Dubiously Jayawardene became the first player to remain unsold. As the day progressed, Jayawardene wasn’t alone in the rejection-bag and startlingly he had company in fellow players from the Emerald Isle with Angelo Mathews, Tillakaratne Dilshan and others finding no buyers.
Suddenly there were whispers about geo-political undercurrents while the truth was actually steeped in pragmatism. Sri Lanka is scheduled to tour England in May and the team-owners were wary about that.
Meanwhile, IPL Chairman Ranjib Biswal clarified: “The Sri Lankans are very much part of the auction just that the teams have their own strategies.”
It was not entirely doom for the Sri Lankans as Thisara Perera and Muttiah Muralitharan were bagged by King’s XI Punjab and Royal Challengers Bangalore respectively.
IPL across the seas?With general elections slated for this summer, a question mark lingers around staging the IPL simultaneously. Memories of the 2009 edition that shifted base to South Africa for the same reason, have cropped up. In recent times, alternate venues such as South Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates were all bandied around but the situation is still fluid.
Queried about the possibility of the IPL shifting base, the league’s Chairman Ranjib Biswal said: “It is the Indian Premier League and we would love to have it in India. We are awaiting the dates of the general elections and then we will decide if we have to look at other venues, a few of them are being considered. Once we know the election dates then we can decide about the venues and about having some matches in India after the elections are over.”
An actress and the flashbulbsPreity Zinta left the photographers in a tizzy while she attended two press conferences in the media room. As an actress, the co-owner of King’s XI Punjab is not immune to flashbulbs but beyond a point she did get fidgety. “Hey, come on please, enough,” she implored before getting serious and explaining the rationale behind her management’s player-choices while a low-profile coach Sanjay Bangar spoke a few words.
In the evening when Sunrisers Hyderabad’s mentor K. Srikkanth asked her if she followed Tamil, Zinta quipped: Anna, sheekrama po (Elder brother, please proceed fast). A bemused Srikkanth asked her about her limited knowledge of the language and she said: “Oh, we have a lot of Tamil-speaking people in the various shooting units and I picked up this basic stuff.”
