SEASON IV of the IPL will see the end of ‘icon players’. It will also see the players being auctioned all over again. Somewhere pink balls are also going to be experimented with this time around in practice games. Two new teams will be joining in as well. So a lot of new things are kind of happening in the IPL.
The IPL has become such a successful model for everyone to follow. It has been a resounding success at almost every level. Season III, which begins sometime in March next year, will have more matches and all that… IPL has really been going from strength to strength. But – and it’s only my personal opinion – the idea of having ‘icon players’ was fundamentally flawed to begin with.
These icon players were not going to be auctioned at all – like all the other players. And they were straightaway going to get 15 per cent more money than the player who had gone for the highest bid in that particular team. All a bit unfair right from the start.
What it actually means is that this player in a team (the one with the highest bid) has of necessity got to go for a very high price. Because his price is going to decide what the icon player will get. If, for example, Ishant Sharma had been auctioned for only $ 100,000, Sourav Ganguly (the icon player for KKR) would have to be content with $ 115,000 only, which is a mere pittance for an icon player. Same logic would have applied to Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh etc. too.
So if the icon player has to get a nice sum of money, it also becomes essential that the next best player is auctioned for an amount of money that will satisfy the stature of the icon player. I have a sneaking feeling that was one of the main reasons why Ishant was auctioned for the ridiculously high price that he was because that also determined what Ganguly would get. Because Ishant was just kind of coming out of the blocks at that time and for him to be auctioned for $ 900,000, seemed a little far-fetched to me (if not altogether fishy).
Another reason why this whole idea of having icon players was fundamentally flawed – players like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman (Laxman turned down the offer to be icon player) were going to be icon players. But these were the very players who had just said about a couple of months before the start of the IPL, that T20 was a young player’s format and they had no interest in being a part of this truncated format.
The Indian team was playing a series in England. From there they just had to rush to South Africa (SA) to take part in inaugural T20 World Cup. The BCCI thought this was mindless cricket and did not want to send a team to SA. But they were being forced to send a team because this was an ICC event.
Senior cricketers – Sachin, Dravid and Sourav – opted out of that T20 World Cup saying it’s for the younger people. Dhoni led the reluctant Indian players (sans the seniors) to SA (they were all saying that the itinerary was too packed). But the Indians surprised even themselves by winning the trophy and beat Pakistan in the finals.
On their return, these players – who did not want to go to SA in the first place – instantly became heroes on the streets of Mumbai. That was the Indian team’s first brush with international T20. It will not be wrong to say that T20 was literally thrust upon them.
A little while later, the same players – Sachin, Dravid and Sourav – who had opted out of T20 World Cup saying they had no desire to play this format, were being made the Icon Players in the IPL. They were the ones who were going to be paid the highest amount of money. But the format was the same. The World Cup in SA was T20 format and the IPL also T20 format. But yes, we are forgetting one thing – too much money was on offer in IPL. So the format did not matter.
Another interesting aspect of the IPL was the auctioning bit. After the first auction, players like Dravid went on record saying that it felt a bit like players being treated as commodities (although Dravid didn’t get auctioned by virtue of him being an icon player) and he wished that such auctioning of players did not happen at all. And that there was some other way.
Well now the three-year contracts of players will end after the next IPL. There will be fresh rounds of auctioning for season IV. There will be no icon players – so even the likes of Sachin and Yuvraj will have to be auctioned. Will these great players then feel like commodities in a marketplace once again?
But these are things for the organisers of the IPL to worry about. If obscene amounts of money are thrown in, priorities can change swiftly. This format or that format. Who cares!
