Firstly the auction where the players names are called out and the reserve bid announced against their names reminds me of a cattle auction. The only thing missing is the players parading up and down the stage. There was no bid for most of the players at their reserve price, some of which was as low as $20,000 (while as astonishing amount of nearly $2.5 mln was paid for Gambhir). This includes legends like Gayle, Chanderpaul, Ganguly and Lara. I guess some of them are past their prime, but some others like Gayle are surely affordable even if their reserve price was higher at $100,000. Gayle did help KKR win some games in the first and second IPL so his contribution cant be easily discounted. It must be embarassing for cricket players not to get any bid, and telling on their skills, surely it was not necessary to broadcast this to a live audience. It could have been done privately and only the results announced to the press.
Secondly, the amounts bid for some players were quite astonishing with the Pathan brothers fetching close to $4.5 mln together (hopefully their parents will not get any threatening calls!) and other players such as Jadeja etc also fetching quite large sums. Much has been written and said that the IPL is a vulgar display of the wealth of these industry leaders, and this was evident in the large amounts being bid by each team for key players. It makes you think- can you justify paying $2.5 mln to Gambhir for playing x number of matches in one month, while so many people in the country are not able to get one proper meal a day. But I guess this is their private wealth and not the tax payers money and they are free to spend it as they wish. The only thing, is when you see them throwing away such large amounts of money in a matter of minutes, it makes you stop and think.
Still, I watched the proceedings, with an open mouth and will probably discuss with colleagues why x was not chosen and y was chosen, as I am sure will most other people, some of whom would have the auction from morning to evening, so the media channels would have achieved what they wanted. And to be honest, I do enjoy watching the IPL matches, since they are shorter than the one day matches and good time pass!! The first and third seasons have coincided with my post delivery time at parents place in Bengalooru and my parents are avid IPL followers, watching nearly every match. So the point of this post was not to rant against the IPL, but to put across my view that showing the auction live on TV is inappropriate and unkind.
No comments:
Post a Comment