While dozens of cricketers — 190, to be precise — across the globe would have been in a celebratory mood for having been signed at the two-day Player Auction for the Indian Premier League, the franchise representatives, who put together splurged nearly ₹540 crore on cricketers in the two-day event, were relieved to have finally got over the frenzy.
A full IPL Auction, with additional two new teams and almost the full squad to develop, on Sunday night saw a huge sigh of relief on the faces of majority of franchise representatives who were involved in the preparation of the Mission Auction for weeks.
After hectic parley including organising trials of cricketers shortlisted by talent scouts to conducting several rounds of mock auctions, it was time to start looking forward to the IPL preparations for most teams rather than have-nots at the auction.
“There is absolutely more demand than supply, but I guess there were challenges because there were 10 teams and it was different,” said Anil Kumble, the Punjab Kings head coach.
Unique exercise
Kumble, during his previous stints in IPL, was a part of the mega auction in 2011 and 2014 but admitted that the franchises’ aggressive approach right from the word go made 2022 a unique exercise.
“The auction dynamics are very very different and you have to be nimble and that is something we realised. You have to be even more nimble during this auction than the previous ones.”
It resulted in the 10 teams ending up signing 11 players with 10 crore-plus price tags, the most in any IPL auction. Not only the domestic and overseas pace bowlers benefited the most, it even ended up in a huge stack of cash to injured Jofra Archer.
Only marquee pacer
“After yesterday, with what the fast bowlers went at, one option became very dear to us that Jofra was the only marquee fast bowler left in the list.
“Of course he (Archer) is not available this year, but we believe in the best of him and when he is fit and available, with (Jasprit Bumrah) he will make a formidable partnership,” said owner Akash Ambani.
The fact that six of the 11 cricketers in the 10-crore club were pacers underlines the demand for them. While crediting team owner Sanjiv Goenka for plotting the “zero balance auction” to precision, chief executive Raghu Iyer stressed that pace bowlers fetching huge price tag wasn’t really surprising.
“With ten teams in fray, every team had to plan more. The kind of pricing for domestic bowlers was because everyone has realised the bowlers are going to be in high demand,” said Raghu, who has earlier been part of the IPL auction during his stints with Rajasthan Royals and the two-year gig with the Pune outfit for the same conglomerate.
“Probably the reason is because bowlers aren’t celebrated as much as batsmen and it seems to be syncing in that batsmen win you matches, but bowlers win you tournaments.”
