Thursday, February 21, 2008

Welcome to the Cricketer's Trading Floor - IPL Player Auction Summarised

77 out of the 79 cricketers that were up for sale were bought by the 8 IPL franchises on a cricket history defining day at the Hilton Towers in Mumbai for a whopping $42 million. Thats an average of over half a million dollars per cricketer!

Here are 7 points summarising what went down at today's Cricketer Auction.

1. Who didn't make it?

Mohammad Yousuf - pending court case due to ICL contract cancellation.

Ashwell Prince - no one was interested.

2. Who spent the most?

Bollywood King Shahrukh Khan (Kolkata) - $6,072,500 for 11 players.

India Cements (Chennai) - $5,925,000 for 11 players.

Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad) - $5,885,000 for 11 players.

Point of Interest: The top 2 franchise bidders - Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya who spent $111.9 million and $111.6 million for the mumbai and Bangalore franchises respectively spent less than $5 million each at the player's auction and were among the lowest 3 bidders today.

3. Who made it to the Millionaires Club?

Mahendra Singh Dhoni - $1.5 million by India Cements (Chennai)
Andrew Symonds - $1.35 million by Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad)

These were the only 2 players who were bid for over a million. The others in the club are the ICON players:

Sachin Tendulkar - $1,121,250 by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance (Mumbai)
Saurav Ganguly - $1,092,500 by Shahrukh Khan (Kolkata)
Yuvraj Singh - $1,063,750 by Preity Zinta (Mohali)
Rahul Dravid - $1,035,000 by Vijay Mallya' UB Group (Bangalore)

4. Who secured the highest bids?

Sanath Jayasuriya - $975,000 by Mukesh Ambani (Mumbai)
Ishant Sharma - $950,000 by Shahrukh Khan (Kolkata)
Irfan Pathan - $925,000 by Priety Zinta (Mohali)
Jacques Kallis - $900,000 by Vijay Mallya (Bangalore)
Brett Lee - $900,000 by Priety Zinta (Mohali)

Point of Interest: Bollywood celebs are BIG spenders.

5. Which were the most overvalued deals?

$950,000 for Ishant Sharma - surely a talented boy but does he seriously command such a price after having played a handful of ODIs and Tests and no T20Is?

$900,000 for Jacques Kallis - undoubtedly one of the best test batsmen in the world, a decent ODI bat, but even his national team dropped him for the T20 world cup that was played in his home country. Is such a price justified?

$675,000 for Mohammad Kaif - Ignored by the national selectors for all forms of the game, untested at the T20 level, why were bidders so interested in him?

6. Which were the most undervalued bids?

$375,000 for Matthew Hayden - are you kidding me? Australia's tour of Pakistan has been given as a probable reason but then team mate Lee who would also be touring fetched $900K!

$400,000 for Ricky Ponting - deserves more doesn't he? Strange that the bidders were not more interested.

$150,000 for Umar Gul - the leading wicket taker of the T20 world cup definitelt deserved more.

If you look at it from the bidders' perspective, they have hit the Jackpot with these undervalued deals.

7. What were the other unexpected bids?

Shane Warne and Glen McGrath went for as low as $450,000 and $350,000 respectively.

David Hussey, Cameron White, and Yusuf Pathan, who collectively have international experience of a handful matches fetched bids of $675,000; $500,000; and $475,000 respectively. Looks like the bidders keep an eye on domestic cricket in other countries and their own. Well done.

Shahid Afridi bagged the highest bid ($675,000) for a Pakistani player ahead of Shoaib Malik, Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif, Younis Khan, Umar Gul, and Kamran Akmal.

Make your pitch on this post...



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6 Pitched:

  1. Obaid said...
     

    Great overview of all the craziness... I hope the games actually live up to the hype. Funny how Preity went after all the boys!

  2. Q said...
     

    I thouht so too, she picked up the so called studs - pathan, lee, sanga..hahaha! And she already had one in Yuvi. I wonder what Ness thinks of all this.

  3. NAzhar said...
     

    Great analysis - definitely shocking how low Ponting, Hayden and Gul went for. I also thought Sharma and Kallis were overvalued. I thought even Gayle went for higher than expected.

  4. Soulberry said...
     

    Ashwell prince's case is an argument against those who feel that one could just walk into leagues of this kind from school.

    The regular performer for SA found it difficult to sell his brand of batsmanship. And he's uni-dimensional. So it isn't as if club owners aren't thinking while bidding for a player.

    Players too must not get carried away and think that all it needs is a few domestic performances or a few international performances to valued. They will have to develop different aspects of their game, be verstaile in their prime talent, and must have the felxibility to keep accomodating improvements in what they do to have value.

    Fitness, primary skills and their range of development, some all round ability, adaptability of player, fielding...all these things have been considered.

    So high level of performances and a range of them with the ability to mould them as needed will fetch better value and custom to players.

    There may be the rare reshman walking stright in on the basis of percieved talent, but mostly, players will have to display their abilities repeatedly to hold any value in such leagues as and when they come up.

  5. Q said...
     

    U make sense as always SB but aren't u bewildered that players like David Hussey and Cameron White who are not considered good enough for Australia were picked up for more than the likes of Ponting, Hayden, and Hussey Sr.?

    For Hussey jr. and White it would have been only domestic performances that helped their case.

    Both of them were more valuable than Warne as well, who was thought to be the most expensive player that will be sold before the auction started.

    Just like I dont understand how these bidders valued these cricketers I dont understand why poor Prince was not picked by anyone.

    All exciting though.

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