Indian Premier League-Silly point et al..

Too much has been written and said about what the Indian Premier League has done to players who havent been paid very well for decades by the BCCI. There were a lot of people who argued passionately though unconvincingly that for too long players havent had their fair share of the revenues controlled by the satraps of the BCCI. There were others who argued that the BCCI was making the game a tamasha by auctioning players in a modern style Mandi. I feel both these groups of people have tried to make their own silly points by comparing the premier league to the soccer leagues worldwide.

In order to take a more dispassionate view about the entire happenings of the past week, it is necessary to step back and analyse what the objective is for the IPL. If the objective for the IPL is to generate money for cricket, I think the auction does this very well. But if BCCI's stated aim is to encourage fresh cricketers and give them a chance to play against stalwarts of international cricket, this league falls very short of what it intends to achieve. To compare the situation with the soccer leagues, though millions of dollars are spent in transferring players across clubs-every premier league has its owns rules governing the number of domestic players that need to be part of the playing eleven. IPL without such a rule cannot claim to develop domestic cricket. There are many ways in which this can be mandated as a rule. For instance, the BCCI can mandate that there can be only a maximum of 6-7 players in each IPL team both foreign and Indian who are currently donning the national colours for their respective countries with the rest of the players coming from the state or region where the team is based. The other way of giving a fillip to domestic cricket is to mandate that owners take a share of one Ranji team in the region that their IPL team is based. Without these clauses IPL is just going to be another entertaining exercise that does nothing to improve cricket at the grassroots level.

The second point that many people have been making is about cricketers getting their fair due bcos of the bidding process. While this may be true for established players, spare a thought for all the people who have represented India in the past. Are they going to get a better deal as a result of the revenues that BCCI is going to earn from this auction? If not, what will be the fate of players who are not as charismatic as Dhoni or Yuvraj once they retire? If the BCCI can hound Kapil by not paying him his pension, think of others who dont even have a voice. While I dont envy the current lot who are getting such huge sums, it is BCCI's responsibilty to ensure players who have represented the national team to get a fair deal even after they have retired. I think these are substantive points that have been missed by critics and proponents of the IPL.