A Great Season Ahead: IPL Style

The Cricket lovers of India can look for a great season this year with the starting of auctions of players for 2012 IPL session. 23 year old Ravindra Jadeja, who was the star in Indian win in Melbourne T-20 yesterday, could garner $2m., (Approximately Rs. 9.7 crores) the maximum in the present auctions. He was garnered by Chennai Super Kings in tie-breaker with Deccan Chargers, with pumping in some more money (said to be around $0.4 m). in an auction today for 17 players, 6 are from India. Last year Gautham Gambhir got $ 2.4m from Kolkata Knight Riders, partly owned by Shah Rukh Khan. It is said that Ravindra Jadeja also equalled that amount this year. Karnataka player R. Vinay Kumar was procured by Royal Challengers for about $ 1 m. This is the second highest bid today.

      Unfortunately V.V.S. Lakshman from AP , could not attract any franchisee. This may be due to his being out of form and the rumours are afoot that he may be dropped from Test Cricket also.

      The popularity of the players can be gazed from the amounts these players are commanding. Even the popularity of IPL is growing year by year. Starting in 2008, IPL is a game affording all its partners what they want from the game. While the players are getting as much money as they shine in the field, the franchises are getting their share of profits from BCCI and the cricket lovers getting the best games to watch. Apart from all this, players in the under-22 category are also getting the chance to get trained in Cricket Matches, played by both national and international players of repute. This augurs well for Indian Cricket as well. To talk about the last point, the players in IPL match are the second best in average salaries they get, after NBA, the most popular Basket Ball League in US.

     The only point for despair now is that Sahara Group has announced that it had withdrawn from the 11-year franchisee agreement it has with BCCI, as it said that BCCI is not responding properly for any of its problems. Particularly, Sahara was asking for a replacement of Yuvaraj Singh who is not in good health, for their Pune Warriors. But, BCCI has refused to budge to this request. This created the differences between BCCI and Sahara, leading to Sahara opting out of the game.