The biggest surprise in the auction for the Indian Premier League cricket tournament - which took place in Bangalore on Saturday – was young Pawan Negi being sold for the second highest price but the highest for an Indian player.
The 23-year-old left-arm spinner from Delhi was bought for Rs 8.5 crore (approxiamately USD 1.35 million) per annum by the franchise Delhi Daredevils. This had news wire services humming and the cricket world agog.
The bid for Negi was only a whit behind the Rs 9.5 crore (approxiamately USD 1.6 miilion) paid to dashing all-rounder Shane Watson by Royal Challengers Bangalore on a dramatic day which saw several stalwarts like Aaron Finch, Hasham Amla and Mike Hussey unsold.
Unlike the experienced Watson, however, Negi was a rookie. More pertinently, unlike Watson who smashed a century and took two wickets in the last T20 match against India in the recent series, Negi hadn’y even taken the field for his country.
That is perhaps why everybody saw his bonanza in the IPL as a favour for just a day earlier, Negi had been selected for the squad to represent India in the Asia Cup and the T20 World Championship to be played over the next eight weeks in the sub-continent.
Most believed that Negi wouldn’t have got into the India side but for the strong recommendation of captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who was also his captain in the IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings, last year. And if he was not an India cap owner, he wouldn’t have earned megabucks in the IPL.
But while such nexus is easy to insinuate, it fails to answer on two counts. First, Dhoni would be a very foolish captain to indulge in favouritism at this stage when his own career is a stake considering the pressure on him currently.
Second, it ignores how the bidding for players in the IPL has evolved since the inaugural year, 2008. So while Negi won the second highest bid, in fact he didn’t quite measure up to what some other Indian players – largely unrecognized – got in the auction as a ratio of base to purchase price.
Negi started at Rs 30 lac (approximately USD 40000) and was sold for approximately USD 1.3 million. But some other players like M Ashwin (Rs 4.5 crore), Karun Nair (Rs 4.2 crore), and Nathu Singh (Rs 3.2 crore) progressed from a base price of Rs 10 lac (approxiamately USD 10500 USD) in Saturday’s auction.
This shows that the purchasing pattern for players has undergone a dramatic change since the inaugural tournament in 2008 when simply marquee names were coveted.
Now, franchises have become wiser and are looking for a better value-for-money proposition from players, looking for a bigger bang for the buck than earlier, and particularly seeking out young Indian talent.
This explains the high price paid for Negi and some others. Franchise owners and their talent scouts have obviously been hard at work to spot and research good players, then paying them big bucks, albeit with some risk.
While this is particularly true of Indian players, it is not only restricted to them. South African all-rounder Chris Morris went for Rs 7 crore (USD 1.08 million) and Australian all-rounder Mitchell Marsh for Rs 4.8 crore (USD 740000).
Neither of them can be considered amongst the best players in the world just yet, but obviously they meet the expectations of franchise owners for being able to win matches.
If nothing else, this shows a departure from the thinking that pervaded team selections in the IPL when marquee names were sought desperately and paid really fancy prices. New strategies for team selection are now in place.
How this plays is not yet known, but the old belief system has clearly been hit for a six.
ends
