For those of you who do not know what Indian Premier League(IPL) is, it a league of tournaments of 20-20 matches that are going to be played between the Indian cities of different parts ofIndia.
Team New Delhi owned by GMR group of companies,
Team Mohali owned by Bollywood actress Preti Zinta and Ness Wadia, great grand son of Muhammed Jinnah.
Team Kolkata owned by Bollywood superstar Sharukh Khan,
Team Mumbai, owned by Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Industries.
Team Hyderabad owned by Deccan Chronicle Newspaper LTD.
Team Bangalore owned by India Cements company Ltd.
And, finally, Team Bangalore owned by Liquor baron Mr. vijay Mallya. All the players were bidded to play for these different Indian cities.
New Delhi (espnstar.com): - The historic IPL players' biddings in Mumbai on Wednesday heralded the dawn of a new era. India’s young players, fresh off the blocks showed where the money is.
India's ODI skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni took home an astounding USD 1.5 million the most expensive of the 77 players who went under the hammer. Australian all rounder Andrew Symonds followed at a close second when he was picked up by Hyderabad at USD 1.35 million.
Suresh Raina, who has not played international cricket for over a year fetched 650,000 dollars from Chennai while Australia’s batting mainstay Michael Hussey managed no more than 250,000 dollars after having to waiting till the last round of bidding to find a buyer. Even Parthiv Patel wracked up more than Hussey.
There was a similar trend through almost all the other teams, where Indian cricketers scorched the pockets more severely than their more experienced international counterparts.
Manoj Tiwari with just a solo appearance for India in an ODI against Australia earlier in the ongoing Commonwealth Series bagged a phenomenal 675,000 dollars for Delhi, several notches higher than Glen McGrath (350,000 dollars), regarded as the greatest bowler of the era.
Similarly, for Hyderabad, RP Singh (875,000 dollars) and Rohit Sharma (750,000 dollars) sang merrily on their way to the bank as a more experienced Herschelle Gibbs sold at no more than 575,000 dollars. VVS Laxman, one of the most elegant batsmen of modern times managed no more than 375,000 dollars.
The most glaring discrepancy came with Jaipur’s acquisition of Yousuf Pathan for 475,000 dollars while Pakistan’s Younis Khan walked aboard at a throwaway 225,000 dollars.
Your jaws could drop even further when you note the fact that Ishant Sharma crossed over to Kolkata for an unbelievably hefty 950,000 dollars while Shoaib Akhtar, the world’s fastest bowler for years came at a comparatively paltry sum.
In Mohali, the bridge, though less apparent, was visible. Irfan Pathan at 925,000 dollars edged past Brett Lee (900,000 dollars).
Mumbai was not far away in its Indian extravaganza. Harbhajan Singh’s tag of 850,000 dollars was 300,000 dollars more than what Mukesh Ambani had to pay for Shaun Pollock’s services in the six week tournament.
The team franchisees not only wanted good players in the team but they were well aware of the players’ track records. Clearly, not all players sold on reputation. Otherwise a Manoj Tiwari would not have cost more than a Gibbs, an Ishant would then have pocketed less than Shoaib and Younis would have left Pathan senior far behind.
The IPL biddings marked the advent of New India. Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Virender Sehwag may have been icon players for their teams but they would not have expected in their wildest dreams that a certain MSD from far away Ranchi would one day storm into the scene they have made their own for decades and walk away with all the glory in one gigantic swipe.