IPL 5: Where some teams are more equal than others

For all its flaws, the first two seasons of the IPL had a charm that has now evaporated in the summer heat. At the outset, the 9 million dollar cap on player acquisitions made the franchise owners, coaches and captains weigh their options, and some of the more fancied teams like Mumbai and Bangalore came a cropper in the process, their lack of 2020 vision exposed.

Bangalore ended up with a team that its owner Vijay Mallya himself described as being more suited for Test cricket. Mumbai fared little better, despite having Sachin Tendulkar at the helm. In contrast, a retired but wily-as-ever Shane Warne was able to get the best out of a rag-tag Jaipur bunch which won the inaugural IPL. How delicious was that? His former Aussie teammate Adam Gilchrist managed to do the same thing with the Hyderabad unit the following year.

But gradually and inexorably, brain power and inspiration have given way to money power and influence. The sheer concentration of proven T20 stars in the Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai teams now make it less likely that any of the others will upset the applecart again like in the first two IPL seasons. Had this improvement in the lineup and fortunes of the three richest franchises come about in a fair and transparent manner, there would be nothing to crib about. That, clearly, is not the case.

The elephant in the room that nobody acknowledges is the impunity with which teams are being allowed to circumvent the caps that had been set for player acquisitions. It’s an open secret that some of the superstars are earning much more than what is shown on paper. There are myriad ways in which a player can be compensated, apart from the stated purchase value.

Take the case of Chris Gayle who almost single-handedly turned around the fortunes of Bangalore last year, blasting the team into the finals after coming in as a replacement for the injured Dirk Nannes. He would have been a prize catch at this year’s auction, sure to break the 2-million-dollar barrier. Instead, he opted to allow Bangalore to retain him for a measly $650,000. Doesn’t this stretch our credulity? The grapevine has it that Gayle will take home a cool $5 million from sponsorships and other lucrative deals. That would make perfect sense for him, but then, why set salary caps in the first place if only a notional amount will be declared? Shouldn’t there be something like a CTC (cost to company) for a true reflection of how much a team is spending to acquire or retain a player?

The 9-million-dollar cap set for each team to acquire players at the outset of the IPL was in fact one of its unique and most interesting features. Teams had to put on their thinking caps and work out just how much they wanted to spend on their star players, what kind of mix they wanted to have. This had made the auction almost as exciting as the game itself; in fact, the auction became a game of monopoly, because no team had enough money to get their perfect set of players. As a result, each team had its strengths and weaknesses, which would become apparent on the ground. And if a team did badly, it wasn’t because it was relatively poor, but because it wasn’t smart enough.

It was also more of an even contest between teams, with every team having about the same number of potential match-winners. This made the IPL less predictable than some other sporting leagues around the world; for example, the New York Yankees almost always top the baseball league in the US, simply because they spend the most on buying up the best players, and not necessarily because they are the smartest or most motivated team.

But now there’s a dumbing down of the IPL too, with the salary cap getting more corrupted each season. That the maximum possible bid of $2 million was made for Ravindra Jadeja was not surprising, because he was one of the few India-capped players available for the mid-term auction this year. But then it degenerated into an absurdity. Two teams, Hyderabad and Chennai, had bid the maximum amount, and this had to be resolved by a secret bid — that’s how the BCCI framed the rules.

The Chennai franchise, owned by the BCCI president, got Jadeja in the end, but we don’t know for how much. It was speculated that as much as $6 million might have been paid to acquire Jadeja, with the extra millions going into the BCCI’s coffers.

Nobody grudges BCCI the moolah, but it impoverishes the IPL in the process. If Chennai actually paid $6 million for Jadeja, but only $2 million is counted in calculating the team’s outlay for players, then there is no sanctity in the salary cap. It would’ve been fairer to resolve the tie with a toss of a coin, rather than tossing millions more into the auction, which is something only the super-rich franchises can do.

And what about players like Tendulkar and Dhoni? Are we really to believe that a Tendulkar gets less than Gautam Gambhir? The least the BCCI can do is to be less hypocritical about this, and do away with the salary caps altogether. Mumbai will then have the players with the best credentials, and each year they will buy up any player who sparkles in one of the other teams. And we can all go ‘Sachin, Sachin’ when Mumbai finally manages to win the IPL!