IPL Player Retention !!! 2011

Indian Premier League, more commonly known as IPL, will most likely be held for the fourth year in a row in 2011. This 4^th edition of IPL is scheduled to be held within a week from the day of the World Cup 2011 final in Mumbai. Some would call it wrong timing and cry over the tight schedule; others might call it an overdose of cricket, while some like me wouldn’t mind it at all!! There is definitely a big interest in the IPL and the fourth edition comes on the backdrop of a lot of controversial happenings right from the accusations against Lalit Modi to the expulsion of the Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab. Both these franchises might still play in IPL4 from what I gather based on the latest news articles. IPL has only grown ever since its inaugural tournament in 2008. Fans packed the stadiums across the nation and I can tell you from my first-hand experience that all of the home games for Mumbai Indians were sold out during the first edition (I can safely assume it was the same during IPL 2010, IPL 2009 was held in South Africa due to the security issues coming out of the Mumbai attack).

Come 2011, IPL will now have two new franchises in Sahara Pune Warriors and Kochi. Kochi has just about managed to meet the BCCI deadline after agreeing to resolve their internal conflicts related to the ownership pattern. The deadline for retaining players is now over and some of the franchises have surprised us by not including the big players while Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) stuck to their most trusted players. Mumbai Indians have now retained Sachin Tendulkar (There was no question about it), Kieron Pollard, Lasith Malinga and Harbhajan Singh (Only 4 players are allowed to be retained). CSK have kept Dhoni, Raina, Murli Vijay and Albie Morkel.  This retention means Mumbai Indians and CSK have now half of their spending power to buy the rest of the players. Mumbai Indians always wanted to retain more players and I’ll be surprised to see if they don’t bid aggressively for Zaheer Khan and Saurabh Tiwary. While these two franchises will bid for players with less money in the bag, Deccan Chargers, Kings XI Punjab and Kolkata Knight Riders have not retained even one. These franchises definitely have the spending power but I am not sure if it is worth losing Adam Gilchrist, Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum, Yuvraj Singh, Saurav Ganguly ( kolkata might lose a large chunk of their fan base if he doesn’t play for KKR), Andrew Symonds from the squad. Dravid and Kumble have been let into the auction as well by Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The player auction, scheduled for January 2011, will be highly interesting with some big players available and two new teams in the battle as well. With Pune and Kochi being bought for $370 million and $333 million respectively, IPL is well on its way to being the biggest and richest sporting league in the world. (It has always been the richest cricket league anyways and was valued at $2 billion a year ago). I hope we don’t have any other controversies related to IPL and would like to see IPL get bigger and better!!

Spirit of Cricket or the lack of it !!!

India and Sri Lanka "have been playing each other almost every second month in the last eight months" in the words of India's best spinner Harbhajan Singh which clearly shows that the India - Sri Lanka rivalry is not only becoming common but also boring to watch and PLAY for the cricketers. At least there was something uncommon about today's game (16th August 2010). The scorecard will show Virender Sehwag unbeaten on 99. For someone who missed watching the game, there are bound to be questions like how could he not score that one extra run or did the other batsman, Dhoni in this scenario, score the winning runs or was there an extra conceded by the bowlers.

Well!!! International Cricket Council (ICC) has been trying hard to imbibe the Spirit of Cricket theme in each of the cricket playing nation's players and even named the recent Australia Vs Pakistan series as the Spirit of Cricket series. This one delivery bowled by Suraj Randiv changes all that. Lacking sportsman spirit, Randiv deliberately bowled a "no-ball" wherein he overstepped by such a large amount that he has made himself a laughing stock in front of the entire cricketing fraternity. Sehwag as usual smashed it over long-off for a huge six and raised his bat in celebration, only to be told moments later that his six will not be considered , as India had already won on account of the no-ball. Rightly so, Sehwag was disappointed and retorted by saying "This is not the first time Sri Lanka has done this, they may have done it with other teams but with India it is the second time." The first time they did that was when Lasith Malinga bowled a wide down the leg side and conceded 4 wides while Sehwag's idol Sachin Tendulkar was left unbeaten on 96.

Randiv might deny his deliberate no-ball attempt but this incident has already put his young and budding carrier on a controversial path. Cricket fans around the world seem to echo the notion that in spite of what happens when a no-ball is bowled, the runs scored by a batsman should be added to his tally. While this controversy has just started to flow across websites and blogs throughout the world, ICC officials and match referees will be pondering whether to take some action against Randiv and whether they can make some minor "tweeks" in the rules of this beautiful Gentleman's game.

We'll wait and see what happens later but for now, lets rejoice this Indian win and a bonus point which will give us an advantage in the next round of the ongoing  tri-series. Go India !!!