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. The auction had everything a James Hadley Chase book would have right from a strong beginning to the thrills and revelations.
Inclusions and exclusions
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.
The way Mumbai Indians' owner Nita Ambani chose players in quick succession seemed as if Mumbai Indians picked without any strategy while Deccan Chargers were busy over-strategising!
This particular player auction was necessitated by the termination of Kochi Tuskers Kerala franchise. More than half of the Kochi players were brought into the auction. Among these were V.V.S Laxman, Ravindra Jadeja, Muttiah Muralitharan, Mahela Jayawardena and Brendon McCullum.
The rest of the pool was made up of players who were undrafted last year. One such was Graeme Swann whose base price was as high as $400,000 but sadly had no takers.
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 went to the Chennai Super Kings after both Chennai Super Kings and Deccan Chargers decided to bid maximum on the Saurashtra cricketer. Last season's Kochi skipper Mahela Jayawardena also had a good day going to Delhi Daredevils for $1.4 million. Mahela joins yet another new recruit at the franchise this season: Kevin Pietersen. Muralitharan who played for Chennai and Kochi in the previous editions of the IPL, will move the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Another surprise was Bengaluru's $1 million claim for Kochi's Vinay Kumar (base price: $100,000).
King Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders snapped the swashbuckling Kiwi Brendon McCullum for $900,000 and West Indies off-spinner Sunil Narine for $700,000, which was a pleasant surprise! While RP Singh went to Mumbai Indians for $600,000, the more aggressive Sreesanth went to Rajasthan Royals for his base price of $400,000 . Pakistani cricketer Azhar Mahmood, now with a UK passport, will play for Kings XI Punjab for $200,000.
Wristy Indian batsman VVS Laxman — a big disappointment with the bat during the recent Australia series — went unsold along with Ian Bell, Ravi Bopara, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Adrian Barath and Mark Boucher. The others left behind include Sri Lankan spinners Ajantha Mendis and Rangana Herath, English players James Anderson, Peter Siddle, West IndianRavi Rampaul and Ireland's 2011 World Cup hero Kevin O'Brien.
Shocks and surprises
Another big shocker was Sahara India's withdrawal 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 to add his bid of $1.8 million to their overall purse, but this was turned down. 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.
Given the disastrous television viewership for IPL 4 and Team India's poor performance in Australia and England, Sahara India has snapped ties with the Board at a time when cricket is not at its pinnacle.
Meanwhile let's wait and watch if BCCI is able 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 be rectified in time to get things in order.
Praveen is pursuing his Masters in Computer Science at University of Illinois at Chicago
