Icons sink in cricket’s 'mandi', but how about some courtesy?

Sure, youth is the toast of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and all that. But how about according some dignity to your one-time ‘icons’?

The IPL-4 auction is over. Many are ready to laugh all the way to the bank but there are a few still ‘unsold’. Among them is Sourav Ganguly. There may be solid cricketing reasons behind why he wasn’t ‘bought’, but the manner of his eviction from the franchise he helped build has raised questions.

Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore owners used the best possible superlatives to describe Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, respectively, but the reality seems to be quite different.

The two legends of Indian cricket were not even informed by the managements of the Knight Riders and Royal Challengers that they no longer were part of their scheme of things.

Both were, incidentally, icons of their respective franchises.

“The management did not bother to inform the players. The so-called dynamics of the auction and Twenty20 realities are fine, but don’t they deserve to be told that you are no longer part of the team’s thinking process? It is sad,” said sources close to the players. Neither player was available for comment. While Ganguly remained unsold for the second day, Dravid was taken for $500,000 by Rajasthan Royals.

A top Knight Riders official refused to answer why the team management did not speak to Ganguly. “I will not answer such questions,” said Venki Maheswari, CEO of the franchise. The Shah Rukh Khan-owned team apparently held some discussions on the issue of retention but never talked to him about their intention of not bidding for him. “We’re happy that we got the best possible side,” Maheswari said.

When asked specifically how they can assuage the feelings of Kolkata’s cricket crazy crowd, the official said he would explore a way to involve Ganguly in the team. “I’ll be the happiest if Dada can, in some way, work with us,” he said hinting that the franchise would consider offering him a mentor’s role. “We’ve not finalised anything but we will work a way out,” he said.  

Mallya, however, was more diplomatic on the issue of Dravid and said he could not afford him. “I am glad that Rajasthan bid for Rahul and I wish him all the luck,” he said then tried justify his decision not to bid for him. “Conversely, you also have to acknowledge that Ganguly, Brian Lara and Chris Gayle are all top-class cricketers of a particular era but nobody bid for them... that tells you something. So no disrespect to anyone of them, no disrespect to Rahul in particular. It is just that we needed to follow our strategy of building a young team and, at the end of the day, I could say maybe I could not afford it.”

Mallya tried to justify Dravid’s exclusion saying that the team was following the vision of Anil Kumble, who wanted a young side. “We consciously decided we want a young team. We made that decision and we were ready to live with the consequences of that decision. If you see all our players are youngsters and we probably have the youngest team in the entire IPL. This is one of the inputs by none other than Anil Kumble, who is now the chief mentor of the team and works with us full time on RCB. He is such a legend and such a competent person in his own right. No wonder he is chairman of the National Cricket Academy. The fact is that he took it upon himself to say that he would groom these youngsters. I just don’t look at them for 2011 but I look at them for 2012,” he said.