Column

Tales from the Locker Room

Trouble is brewing. Already the air is filled with threats of civil strife and anarchy. The common man is ready to take to the streets, and for once it is a noble cause that’s playing catalyst. I speak quite obviously of the IPL, this body which was officially called the Indian Player League, has now rechristened itself as the Indain Payees League from Monday morning of this week.

The reason for this wide scale agitation, (reports include a truck being punctured in Rae Barelly as well as an Australian tourist being refused a second cup of tea in a dhaba outside Ahmednagar), is the disproportionate salaries being paid to the cricketers by the League.

Case in point? Symonds earning more than Tendulkar, Ponting earning less than Manoj Tiwary. Whilst in the case of Messrs Ishant Sharma vs Glenn McGrath, if Ishant was to hire Glenn as his personal bowling coach, McGrath would earn more than the 20 dollars he’s being paid by the IPL at present.

In an effort to stop the civil chaos from spreading faster than a bad review for a Lindsay Lohan film, I spoke to Dr Mayank Kampani on the whys and hows of the strange disparity in payments.

Andrew Symonds and MS Dhoni justify their fees, regardless of what they do in the cricket field. In the case of Symonds he will be launched in a Telgu film first as second villian third row fourth from the right and then slowly inch his way to main villian so his team Hyderabad will be well rewarded.Similarly MS Dhoni will be used for ribbon cutting, gracing social occasions, flagging of motor rallies and attending high profile birthday parties where mostly he’ll make his appearance from inside a cake, except perhaps on actual match days when he’ll appear beside the cake. The Chennai superstars will thus be happily compensated.

Ricky Ponting, Graeme Smith and Ramnaresh Sarvan are all very bad actors and in any case don’t have the right look for movies or the more hazardous social circuit.Glenn MacGrath will not be able to gain a foothold until Tom Alter decided to step down and unlike Symonds, Tendulkar can only be cast as a hero never as a villian. In that respect Andrew is a more safe all wicket bet.

So if you are one of the voters who stopped bikes from plying on the JJ flyover, remember the IPL is about much more than just cricket.