Sitting at his home in Melbourne, Mitchell Starc was one of the many Australian players, inquiring with their skipper Pat Cummins when and where he was taking them for dinner. The Australian Test team’s WhatsApp group was buzzing with messages and jokes, some even checking with Cummins which property he is buying up next for he had just become the costliest IPL player ever as Sunrisers Hyderabad bought him for Rs 20.50 crore. The IPL player auctions, which makes global headlines and history being made every year, had touched the Rs 20 crore barrier for the first time. But little did Starc or anyone know it would be the shortest lived history ever and all his teammates would turn to him as an hour later as the left-arm pacer eclipsed his captain to be the most expensive IPL player ever with Kolkata Knight Riders spending a whopping Rs 24.75 crore on him.
That the two Australian pacers, fresh from the World Cup triumph on Indian soil, would be the most sought after ones was expected. For only a month ago in Ahmedabad, they had outfoxed, out-fought an Indian team that looked unstoppable. If one goes by history, such performances coming close to player auctions have always fetched big pay cheques for players. And that these two happen to be precious commodities called fast bowlers meant, they were bound to generate interest.
But it is the price that has made everyone drop their jaw. To put things into perspective, in the inaugural player auction, the minimum salary cap itself was only Rs 24.95 crore. Each year, the winning team in the IPL, takes home Rs 20 crore. At Rs 24.75 crore and Rs 20.50 crore, Starc and Cummins would get more than a crore for each game they play in the IPL. And the money they take home for featuring two months of the IPL is more than what they earn from Cricket Australia’s annual contract. That even the Ambanis, who were in the Mumbai Indians table, couldn’t go for them after being part of the initial bid showed how priceless they were.
As Cummins bid hit Rs 20 crore, a round of applause went around the auction room. And when Starc’s winning bid ended at Rs 24.75 crore, they were awestruck. But not once there was a sense of disbelief. To search for logic in IPL auctions would be akin to searching for a drop of water spilled from a glass. Vikram Solanki of Gujarat Titans, who lost out on the battle to sign Starc summed things up. “It (price) was the one to take him.”
Venky Mysore, the CEO of Kolkata Knight Riders would explain the logic for spending all the money on a player who had opted out at the last moment after they had acquired him for Rs 9.40 crore in 2018. “When auction is over, all 10 teams are going to go home having spent 100 crore. Each team decides to slice it differently. So what you spend up or down or what not, is a perspective. Ultimately all of us are spending the same money,” he said.
But the splurge on overseas players, which keeps growing every auction, has already triggered some questions from the Indian players. With franchises not keen on releasing star Indian players, they are retained ahead of big auctions for a certain sum. On paper, Rohit Sharma, MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant get Rs 16 crore while the likes of Jasprit Bumrah (Rs 12 Cr), Suryakumar Yadav (Rs 8 crore), Mohammed Siraj (Rs 7 crore). Although some of the franchises do make up by paying them extra (one of the open secrets), and add additional packages, it is still lesser than what overseas players fetch through auctions.
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Speaking on his YouTube channel, India player R Ashwin had wondered if it is alright for overseas players, especially Australians to skip big auction and enter the fray in mini-auction as it usually fetches big sum because there is no more demand than supply. And Anil Kumble, former India captain, said time has come for the IPL to think about having a separate pay purse for overseas players or else the pay parity would continue.
“This is where I feel in a squad of 25 players, where you have eight overseas players, the purse also needs to be one third for the overseas players,” Anil Kumble said on Jio Cinema. “I think that’s something that should happen eventually. Otherwise, you will see a lot of disparity at the auction. You have a separate overseas purse, otherwise you will see this disparity of 50%, 60% of the squad where you have options for only four players,” Kumble added.
With the franchises saving up all the money for the fast bowlers, the spinners who followed the set went totally unsold. Earlier, Wanindu Hasaranga, the Sri Lanka all-rounder, who bowls leg-spin and plays the role of a finisher was bagged by Hyderabad at his base price of Rs 1.5 crore. Even India’s Shardul Thakur, expected to reach double-figure mark was bought by Chennai Super Kings for Rs 4 crore, who were even fortunate to add Rachin Ravindra for just Rs 1.8 crore.
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