Plan for level-playing field is realised finally
BANGALORE : When Lalit Modi put in place the Indian Premier League, he took care to establish a formula where the tournament stayed competitive and didn’t become the domain of the richer clubs, like the European football leagues where you can count before the season who will be among the top five.
Modi put a salary cap and had a limit on the spending purse, but the formula didn’t succeed for the first 10 years. The goal of ensuring a level-playing field has finally come true at the start of the new decade of IPL.
As widely expected, teams will be more competitive this time. There were two reasons: first, the availability of a wider talent pool, and more importantly, the budget teams for the first time participated whole-heartedly in the auction.
No one held back. For the first 10 years, Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI were the two who were always content to play second fiddle to the likes of Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore. The two grabbed the headlines this weekend. It was on the power of the new broadcast deal that the two made the headlines.
MAKING CSK WAIT
CSK are past masters of this game, but for once they were struggling to get their man on Sunday as Kings XI and RR, powered by the expected windfall from the central pool revenue share, bid aggressively.
The Chennai team’s first buy of the day was in the fourth set of the morning, when they got Shardul Thakur for ~2.6 crore, and were left with the most sum (~6.5cr) at the end of the auction.
But teams like CSK, Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers had started the auction with a big advantage, having retained their best players. The job was to build a team around the core group and they managed that. To add to Dhoni, Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja, they have experienced hands like Murali Vijay, Kedar Jadhav, Ambati Rayudu, Faf du Plessis, Dwayne Bravo and Shane Watson.
Kolkata Knight Riders have stuck to getting a certain style of players, the more explosive kind, to suit the changed conditions at the Eden Gardens. In Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Johnson and young Kamlesh Nagarkoti, they have the personnel to form a lively track.
Delhi built their team around young batting stars Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer and India U-19 captain Prithvi Shaw. Skipper Gautam Gambhir should add experience and Kagiso Rabada, Trent Boult and Mohammed Shami give them pace power.
Sunrisers Hyderabad had made early inroads on the opening day and have a settled look. Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah give Mumbai Indians the nucleus, and though they didn’t have big gains in the early rounds of the auction, they finally managed a few buys that gives them the balance.
RCB have added quality to support Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, with the likes of Brendon Mccullum, Quinton de Kock, Mandeep Singh and Parthiv Patel. They have good spin options led by Yuzvendra Chahal, and all-rounders.