Cricket

Money will rule the game

Players are prepared to leave their national sides opting for IPL rather than play for their country because of the money factor, comments Harpal Singh Bedi

  If the Australian cricketers are overawed, you can’t blame them. If Kiwis, Sri Lankans and West Indians are just deserting their teams to rush to India, you can’t stop them. And if the Pakistanis — yes, the same players who once thought beating India in cricket match was next to winning a war — are queuing outside the Indian High Commission in Islamabad for visa, you need not be surprised.
India is new El Dorado for the players in cricket-playing countries. They have never seen so much money and till 20 February this year could not have ever imagined of earning so much.
   On 20 February, for the first time in the history of any sports in the world, (cricket) players were auctioned in a five-star hotel in Mumbai. And the money? It not only rained, it poured, as the auction went on and on. After the auction IPL (Indian Premier League) boss Lalit Modi boasted that Aston Villa Football Club is worth £62 million and his Mumbai franchise has just gone for almost as much.
In Football, Basketball, Rugby, etc. in Europe and America players are transferred, not auctioned. And there is a huge difference between auction and transfer.
   Cricket is no doubt very popular in the Indian subcontinent, but out of the four test-playing countries Sri Lanka and Bangladesh boards have virtually no money, Pakistan has some but not enough. It is the Indian board which has the problem of plenty (of money).
Among other Test playing countries, New Zealand and West Indies are struggling (financially and otherwise also). England is managing but not flourishing. Australia and South Africa are in the upper-middle-class category.
   The genie unleashed by the BCCI (Board of Cricket Control for India) in the form of IPL has rattled the cricket world. The International Cricket Council (ICC) has been forced to kowtow to the Indian board. Most of the ICC members are sulking but cannot say anything because it is the money that is going to rule the game from now on; not they.
   BCCI set up IPL to counter Indian Cricket League (ICL) being run by the legendary Kapil Dev along with Zee Television network. The Indian board felt threatened that its financial clout will suffer considerably if a rival league is allowed a free run.
   BCCI, after forming the IPL, virtually outlawed the ICL and forced the ICC not to recognise it. BCCI also saw to it that any player of any country playing in ICL will not be able to represent his country in any level of international competition.
   Questions are asked why other boards are just submitting to BCCI. The answer is simple: Money talks. Players are interested in money. They are prepared to leave their national sides — West Indies is the case with Collins Padro, Shivnarain Chanderpal and Chris Gayle opting for IPL rather than play for their country in a series against Sri Lanka. (They have been assured that playing in IPL will not create any problem for them.) To add to the woes of other boards, Pakistan has started feeling the pinch, with most of the Sri Lankan players opting to play in IPL rather than visit Lahore/Karachi and Islamabad.
   But that is neither BCCI’s or IPL’s concern. They want big money and they are getting it. To quote I.S. Bindra, advisor designate to the ICC president, IPL ‘is a new milestone for Indian cricket because never before was a player determined by his star value to play for a certain team. The players were always at the mercy of the selectors and the selection committee but here they are measured for their value as players and one should see the auction to believe the interest shown by the franchisee. Let me tell you that I have not seen anything like this (auction) in the last 30 years. It has been a wonderful drama and I wish all of you had seen it (the auction was not open for the press). For the first time the market is determining the price of a player and not the selectors or the selection committee. The way the IPL is coming up and the overwhelming response shows that it has taken off well. We are taking the domestic cricket to a new level and I am sure it will be a big success. This truly is a landmark in Indian cricket since 1994 when we had been freed from the clutches of Doordarshan’s monopoly.’

On to IPL. There are eight teams:
•Delhi Daredevils: GMR invested $84 million for the team (Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Glenn McGrath, Mohammad Asif, Daniel Vettori)
•Rajasthan Royals (Jaipur): was bought for $67 million by Emerging Media (Yusuf Pathan, Justin Langer, Shane Warne, Graeme Smith, Younis Khan, Shane Watson, Morne Morkel, Dmitry Mascarenhas, Sohail Tanveer)
•Deccan Chargers (Hyderabad): Deccan Chronicle paid $107.1 million (V.V.S. Laxman, Andrew Symonds, Adam Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi)
•Mumbai Indians: Mukesh Ambani, $111.9 million (Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya, Shaun Pollock, Harbhajan Singh, Robin Uthappa)
•Royal Challengers (Bangalore): Vijay Mallya, $111.6 million (Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Cameroon White, Nathan Bracken)
•Mohali: Preity Zinta and Ness Wadia, $76 million (Yuvraj Singh, Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene, Irfan Pathan, Brett Lee)
•Chennai Super Kings: India Cements, $91 million (Mahendra Dhoni, the highest bid player in the inaugural edition, Matthew Hayden, Mike Hussey, Stephen Fleming, Jacob Oram, Muttiah Muralitharan)
•Kolkata Knight Riders: Shah Rukh Khan, $75.09 million (Sourav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting, Shoaib Akhtar, Chris Gayle, Ishant Sharma)
IPL ground rules for franchise squads:
•Each squad must have a minimum of 16 players.
•This will include a maximum of eight currently available foreign players per squad. (Any foreign players not available for any reason will not count towards the total.)
•Each franchise can have a maximum of four foreign players in the playing eleven for each match. The squad will also consist of a minimum four under-22 players (the catchment players and the Indian national players, if so qualified, can be counted for the purpose of this rule).
•The minimum salary an under-22 player is expected to make is US$20,000 per year. For other Ranji and non-auction players, it is US$50,000 per year. Each franchise will have to spend a total of at least $3.3 million on players’ fees for the 2008 season.
   The leading Indian real estate developer DLF Ltd. bagged the title sponsorship right with a highest bid of Rs 40 crore per annum. The deal gives DLF exclusive title sponsorship rights for a period of five years, valuing the title sponsorship in excess of Rs 200 crore ($50 million). Kingfisher Airlines, run by Vijay Mallya, the Bangalore franchise owner, followed, who sealed a five-year deal for $26.5 million as the official umpire partner. A co-sponsorship pact of $22.5 million with Hero Honda, and contract worth $12.5 million with Pepsico took the total sponsorship pool to approximately $111.5 million. This is besides the IPL contract with Sony Max and World Sport Group (for media rights) for $1.026 billion.
   The eight franchises will get a share from the sponsorship pool, of about $7 million each.
Now to the mind-boggling earnings for some of the players, not the complete list:
• Mahendra Dhoni, bought by Chennai Superkings, $1.5 million (Rs 6 crore)
•Symonds, $1.35 million (Rs 5.4 crore) to play for Hyderabad
• Muttiah Muralitharan, Chennai, $6,00,000
• Jacob Oaram (New Zealand) and Albei Morkel (South Africa), $675,000 each
•Adam Gilchrist, Hyderabad, $700,000
•Herschelle Gibbs,  Hyderabad, $575,000
•Sanath Jayasuriya, Mumbai, $975,000
•Harbhajan Singh, Mumbai, $850,000
•Robin Uthappa, Mumbai, $800,000
•Shaun Pollock, Mumbai, $550,000
•Ishant Sharma, Kolkata, $950,000
•Shoaib Akhtar, Kolkata, $700,000
•Chris Gayle, Kolkata, $800,000
•Brendon McCullum, Kolkata, $700,000
•Ricky Ponting, Kolkata, $400,000
   This display of money power, unheard in the annals of the game, has created panic in other cricket boards. There are whispers in the corridors of the ICC that India is becoming too big and its (alleged) domination is not good for the game.
   With BCCI strongly pushing I.S. Bindra’s candidature for the post of CEO of the ICC, tension began to mount in the ICC. To thwart the Indian’s nomination, they joined hands to appoint South Africa’s Imtiaz Patel as the next CEO in place of Malcolm Speed, whose term is ending, and made Bindra advisor to the ICC president.
   Also, the ICC has asked Sunil Gavaskar, chairman of the cricket committee, to choose between this position or be the commentator. The legendary Indian opener has been a trenchant critic of the functioning of the ICC.
   Not many boards are openly coming out against the BCCI at present. But they are bound to create problems for Sharad Pawar once he takes over as ICC chairman in 2010.
   India is to host the 2011 World Cup along with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. But BCCI will have to tread cautiously not to hurt the sensibility of other countries and not to be seen as a bully in the cricket world.
   Already, the English Cricket Board has sounded a warning. Its chairman Giles Clarke has claimed that England’s top players could be lured into the financially lucrative IPL, which is approved by the ICC.
Dimitri Mascarenhas is the only Englishman to have signed up so far, largely due to the IPL clashing with the county season. But Clarke insists no player can be poached without the ECB’s consent.
‘  We have a contract with BCCI’, Clarke told Sky Sports. ‘In that contract, they’re not allowed to take any English players of any kind to play in IPL if there is no No Objection Certificate (NOC).
‘IPL will not play any player who has not received an NOC.’
   How successful IPL will be, only time will tell. But one thing is certain. There is no going back from here. The players have tasted blood and now boards will have to be more alert and cautious in dealing with them.

                          
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