Slump hits cricket for a boundary

‘Cricket hits slump for a six’, ‘What slowdown?’ Headlines like these, and the shrill excitement on TV channels during the IPL auction, were perhaps a natural reaction to the 1.55-mn-dollar tag that first Andrew Flintoff and then Kevin Pietersen got, both crossing the highest bid the previous year — $1.5 mn for MS Dhoni.

But if you think about it, it’s clearly a case of missing the woods for a couple of tall trees. Here’s why.

Of the total amount available to the eight teams for the auction this year — $13.6 mn — they spent only $7.65 mn, which is a little more than half. That’s hardly the stuff of recession-defying splurging; more a reflection of the caution and conservatism with which most of the franchisees approached the auction this year.

That’s hardly a surprise given the uncertainties surrounding the ad spend this year due to the economic slowdown (as only DNA reported on Saturday). So, while everyone was jumping up and down at the millions spent at the auction, the bigger picture really emerges when you look at the unspent millions.

Of the 8 bidders, the only ones to have really opened their purse strings were Chennai Superkings — who spent $1.74 mn out of their $2 mn cap — and Bangalore Royal Challengers — who spent $1.71 mn out of the $1.95 mn available to it.

Teams have a cap on spending, but the amounts available to each for the auction varied according to factors like what they spent on buying lower-level players outside the auction.  Bangalore’s splurge probably has more to do with Vijay Mallya’s flamboyance and determination to get Kevin Pietersen to revamp the team after cribbing right through the last IPL season about the ‘Test’ team he had got stuck with.

But these were anomalies. The conservatism becomes evident if you see what each of the remaining six teams did at the auction. Take Kolkata Knightriders, the only franchisee to have made a profit last year.

There was a buzz about how Shah Rukh Khan called up to ensure they - and not Preity Zinta’s Mohali team - bought Mashrafe Mortaza. Knightriders ended up paying $600,000 for him, but here’s the real point - Mortaza was their sole acquisition though they had nearly $1.5 million to spend.

What’s more, Knightriders has lost the services of four Pakistani players this year, including Shoaib Akhtar who alone had a pay packet of nearly half a million dollars. So Shah Rukh Khan will presumably save more money this year (by terminating the contracts of players like Shoaib) than what he spent on Mortaza.

The accompanying chart, giving what the franchisees could have spent and how much they actually did at the auction, makes the picture quite clear. It was more a case of the economic blues hitting cricket for a boundary, if not a six, than the other way round.
—With inputs from Vijay Tagore