IPL

Difficult to criticize McCullum for thinking of himself first

Brendon McCullum has finally accepted what was a known fact. Most of New Zealand’s top-notch cricketers were heading towards a ‘splitsville’ with their cricket board, after it was announced that the series with Australia in the month of March this year would mean that they would have to miss half of the IPL.

While McCullum does not say it in as many words, it is very evident that the sentiments of the aggressive opening batsman would have been echoed by the rest of the players as well. McCullum had to take a ‘holiday break’ to actually decide on whether he wanted to sign the New Zealand contract or play as a free agent and play only in the IPL. Thankfully, from the New Zealand cricket’s point of view, he chose the former.

McCullum makes an interesting point. He says that he is disappointed at the criticism meted out to him and his ilk and asks, “In what other industry would you be expected to take options that cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars?”

Take these statistics. Before the new contacts came in place this year, the top 20 players in New Zealand were contracted and ranked. The best ranked player earning $175,000. The 20th ranked contracted player earned $50,000. Assuming that McCullum is a top-five cricketer in the New Zealand cricket, he would have probably earned $150,000 from his national contract.

For featuring in one whole season of the IPL, which lasts all of six weeks, McCullum was signed up for $700,000. The likes of Ross Taylor, Shane Bond and Daniel Vettori are no different.

This is not greed. To give you an analogy, it is akin to working for a company that pays you X, and then shifting out to another foreign firm which offers 1.5 X (this would happen quite regularly during those heady, pre-recession days!). Would you refuse to shift out, on the grounds of ‘loyalty’ to the previous firm? 20% of the people may do so.

So, let me now increase the stakes. The new firm offers you 5X. So, if you are an Indian and earned Rs. 500,000 per annum, this new firm offered you a salary of Rs. 2,500,000, but with the caveat (!!) that you had to work abroad. Not only that, you were supposed to work for only one and half months in the year. For the rest of it, you were free to do what you wanted.

Would one say no to such an offer if the firm that makes it to you was above board? Then, on what grounds can the cricketers be accused of wanting to earn the money that they stand to earn through the IPL. Or at least try and negotiate better terms for themselves.

How can the IPL 4 schedule be tweaked around to reduce games

By Suneer Chowdhary

The IPL will finally talk cricket. No, I mean the real cricket. No off the field shenanigans, no court-room battles, no squabbles over the right to convene meetings, just pure cricket.

Well, that is only if you have reconciled with the fact that financials and cricket go hand-in-hand and each time cricket gets discussed, the monetary implications are an implicit part of the discussions.

So, when the two most important points get raised in the meeting amongst the interim chairman of the IPL and the ten IPL franchises, related to the player auctions and the number of games that will be played next year, it is evident that the sides will be taken, for and against the ruling, based on the short and the long term financial gains for the entity.

Yet, one hopes that the trickle-down effect finds some relief for the players, whose retirement age is fast moving into the territory of their tennis counterparts. Start early, and by the time you are 28 or 29, you are so burnt out that you cannot expect to make any more headway.

The biggest piece of discussion, to me, would be the number of games that will be played in the tournament. 94 is a strict no-no. In fact, from a spectator’s point of view, even 60 seemed like a drag in the previous season, but, let us not go down that road; audiences are probably not even counted as stakeholders of the IPL. From the players’ point of view, there were enough murmurs amongst them in the previous edition which said that exhaustion had become a global issue.

There have been many ideas proposed like having the tournament on a single-leg basis, or going ahead with a couple of groups. Personally, if one were to look at it financially, there cannot be any way in which the tournament can be reduced to less number of games than what is already has. A single-leg format will reduce the number of games to 49, which will reduce the central kitty and with the increase in the teams, it will reduce the takeaway for each of the sides as well.

The other option is worth considering. Ten sides divided into two groups of five each. On a home and away basis, that makes it 20 games in each of the groups, and 40 in total. The second hurdle would be if the IPL decides to knock any team out at this stage, which may not make financial sense.

So, the next round could be a knock-out with the top three sides from each group qualifying for the quarter-finals and the bottom two from each group fighting it out in a pre-quarter-final – again on a home and away basis. Two of the bottom four will then go through to the quarter-finals, and join the top six, to be followed by the semis and the final – all of which except, probably the final on a home and away basis.

This will ensure that the number of games played are around 58, very similar to the previous edition.

The other way to about it is to have the top three from each group play out a Super Six round, which can also be done on a home and away basis; with the top two going through to the semi-finals. This will ensure that there are 62 games if the semi-finals and the finals are not double-legged and 66 if they are!

Modi maligning BCCI’s image: Board, but could he have done it alone?

Sport and controversies have gone hand-in-glove, and cricket has had its fair share. Yet, the amount of filth that has emanated from the IPL mess in a span of a couple of months, has probably covered the sport with enough controversy to last a life-time.

And they say that it is only the tip of the iceberg, with the recent controversies like the one involving Sharad Pawar, Supriya Sule and Chirayu Amin also revealing the glacial body further.

At the outset, it was a simple case of the aforementioned being part owners of an IPL franchise if they had gone on to win the bid. Thankfully for them, they did not, beaten hollow by the Sahara Group. But had they gone on to own the Pune franchise, it would have meant that at least two of the co-owners of the side would have been in a similar situation as N Srinivasan; conflict of interest.

Not so long ago, Sunil Gavaskar had had to resign from the ICC as its cricket committee chairman when that role and his media commitments were found to be in direct conflict. As a commentator and columnist, Gavaskar could wield his straight-forward talking against those who were in the ICC, as umpires, match referees or any other official position, and that had not gone down too well with the ICC.

If that was a conflict of interest, this is many, many times over. There is an obvious detesting for the manner in which Modi, to my mind, has attempted to mess the sport up with his so-called visionary ideas. However, there cannot be too much doubt that owning or part-owning of IPL teams by IPL Governing Council members or even the members of the board can hardly be allowed. Even before he became the interim chairman, Amin was the Governing Council member, and for him to own a franchise would have brought about only more trouble.

The only result out of the same would be more allegations ranging from nepotism to the ones that Modi has brought about on Srinivasan in the recent times. More mud-slinging, more bad press and more erosion of brand Indian cricket. The latest in this war of words is the news that Manohar has come out in the defence of his interim chief and lashed out at Modi for ‘maligning’ the Board’s image.

Couldn’t be more true, except that Modi couldn’t have done it alone. He could never have done it alone.

Lalit Modi’s New Tweet/Googly: Will Attend IPL Governing Council Meet

In a turn of stand, Lalit Modi has thrown a new googly at the BCCI. He has now decided to attend the much talked about IPL Governing Council meet scheduled for Monday, 26 April 2010.

Not just that, Modi ensured to underline the fact that he will attend the Governing Council meeting as the Chairman and Commissioner of IPL!

Mr Modi in another tweet a few minutes back added (see above) that he has also scheduled a press conference at noon tomorrow. That also ensures that the meet gets over before that, or at least, Mr Modi gets a break from the meet to reassess things, if the situation so requires. It is pertinent to note that Modi has already hired the legal services of two of India’s top lawywers, Ram Jethmalani and Harish Salve, and he may want to consult them after hearing what the rest of the Governing Council has to say.