ipl auctions in 2017 IPL

Nine years ago, I was a part of the very first IPL auction. And it was a fascinating experience, given the enormously powerful and yet diverse forces in play at the table. Film stars, business moguls and powerful sports administrators, each with their own philosophy and bidding style. Seen many great decisions and some terrible mistakes. The six IPL auctions I attended at the table gave me some fascinating insights about this strange monster which is the IPL auction, which actually has no real parallel in sport. Here are a few. Nobody wins in an ego fight, except other teams: Every once in a while, two extremely powerful and successful individuals start bidding for the same player. And backing down is just not in their genes. At some point it stops becoming about the player and becomes a personal clash of wills and the money goes beyond control. The only people who really benefit are the other teams, as one of the two is going to hugely overpay for the player. Even the player does not really gain, as he ends up being under a lot of pressure and media scrutiny.

In 2009, my team kept bidding for a player from a neighbouring country where the price spiraled to four times the amount we had budgeted. The player had just one disastrous game, and never got picked up for an IPL team again. Good teams do not pick individuals, they address needs: There are just a handful of game changing players, like Gayle, AB or a Pollard or Dhoni in their prime for whom it may be worth throwing everything you have to build around. But most picks for a squad have to be addressing a need, so instead of planning to take, say a Brett Lee, you pencil in a set of five of six international fast bowlers and make a priority list. Then even if your first option has gone up to an unreasonable price you can always drop out and look for other options at a more reasonable price. And often you can get a steal. But if there is just one name there and not a category, and your coach is insistent, the price can be ruinous. In 2011 Daniel Christian became the focus of a bidding war between two franchises with Australian coaches and went home with a staggering $ 900,000. He was released after one disappointing year and picked up at one ninth of the price the next year. Body language is key: A lot of the pauses, breaks and even discussions on auction tables are often staged. Most teams have staff also carefully monitoring the reactions of other bidding teams. The person wielding the paddle for a team is also key. For many years Jeet Banerjee was the man with the KKR paddle, and his s en s e of body language had been honed by years of exposure to art auctions. One of his more s u c c e s s -ful tactics was to quickly keep putting the paddle up just to signal to the opposing team that KKR would take the player at any price, making them quit, though KKR itself might have actually been just more two bid s away from quitting. N u m b e r s tell you only a par t of the picture: Today, anybody can access the basic data on T20 players around the world. And it’s tempting to ask why a player in the New Zealand league who averages in the forties with a 140 strike rate is ignored year after year, or why a player who scored 80 in 30 balls in the Mushtaq Ali is ignored yet again. The truth is that the Kiwi player in question may be absolutely clueless against spin and struggle to bat on slower Indian tracks, and that Indian wonder kid was playing against a particularly bad attack on a small ground.

The other thing numbers don’t tell you is temperament, it’s easy enough to play state T20 matches with 50 people and a few stray dogs in the stands, but will the player be able to perform against the top players in the world in front of 60,000 screaming fans at the Eden Gardens. So when your favourite team again ignores a seemingly good prospect, they probably know something you don’t. And that’s probably why they are sitting there while you are watching the auction on television.