Last week’s Indian Premier League’s (IPL) auction in Dubai reiterated the sporting brand’s enduring value and financial muscle. The T20 league, which many years ago Rahul Dravid famously referred to as ‘a domestic tournament with an international flavour’, has come a long way since its launch on a glitzy April night at Bengaluru’s M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in 2008. The championship has survived a betting and fixing scandal, team suspensions and ownership issues, and become an irreplaceable element of the Indian summer and a much-watched fixture in the annual cricket calendar. The latest auction with its overseas tryst had an obvious recency bias as evident in the World Cup winning Australian squad’s trio of skipper Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Travis Head eliciting competitive bids. The first two also scaled the ₹20 crore peak, which had remained unscaled so far in the IPL’s history. Kolkata Knight Riders picked Starc at ₹24.75 crore and Sunrisers Hyderabad latched onto Cummins at ₹20.50 crore. In all the club against country debate that affects sports like football and cricket, what a player achieved for his nation adds immense value to his or her credentials, and that in turn means better money with clubs vying for the star athlete’s presence. The Aussies reaped their rewards and many others too were recognised.
The build-up to the auction had its share of drama, as Mumbai Indians took Gujarat Titans skipper Hardik Pandya. He was subsequently appointed as the Mumbai Indians’ captain and that meant Rohit Sharma’s chequered history as an IPL captain had perhaps drawn to a close. There were cryptic social media posts from Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav, and that added to the speculation within the Mumbai Indians’ ranks. And since the IPL is seen as a mirror to the Indian team’s fortunes in T20, the presumption is that Pandya will continue to lead India in the shortest format. With the West Indies and the U.S. hosting next year’s ICC T20 World Cup, the latest auction and the 2024 IPL edition will have a lot of layered meanings attached to them. Seen in that light, unsung Indian players, plying their wares in domestic cricket, being picked by various franchises, is also a reflection of a young crop that may don the Indian blue sometime in the future. Players such as Sameer Rizvi, Kumar Kushagra, Shubham Dube, Swastik Chhikara and Ramandeep Singh found eager buyers. But the way Pakistan cricketers have been kept away from the IPL is also a pointer that sport cannot stay immune to geopolitical tensions.
