IPL 2010 – Pre-Season News and Drama

Summary of Auction
Jan 20, 2010

Indian Premier League Season 3 held a 66 player auction. Shane Bond, Kieron Pollard, Kemar Roach had the highest bids against their names. Unfortunately, none of the Pakistan players had any bids. The reason behind that seems political more than anything. Several Pakistan players and seniors have come out in the media condoning the IPL for “making fun” of them.

Below is summary of how the 8 IPL teams spent their money. Each team had a limit of spending $750,000 and silent tie-breakers would be used in case of a tie.

Mumbai Indians:
Kieron Pollard (Maximum of $750,000 plus the undisclosed tiebreaker amount)
Harshal Patel (Draft Pick – U19 Player)

Chennai Supers Kings:
Thissara Perera ($50,000)
Justin Kemp ($100,000)

Kolkata Knight Riders:
Shane Bond (Maximum of $750,000 plus the undisclosed tiebreaker amount)

Deccan Chargers:
Kemar Roach ($720,000)
Harmeet Singh ($17,500/Rs. 800,000) (Draft Pick)

Delhi Daredevils:
Wayne Parnell ($610,000)

Royal Challengers Bangalore:
Eoin Morgan ($220,000)
Ashok Menaria (Draft Pick – U19 Player)

Kings XI Punjab:
Adrian Barath ($75,000 – Outside the auction)
Yusuf Abdulla ($50,000 – Base Price)
Mohammad Kaif ($250,000)

Rajasthan Royals:
Damien Martyn ($100,000)
Adam Voges ($50,000)

Bond and Pollard get the highest bids (Source)
Jan 19, 2010

Indian Premier League 2010 featured a 66 player auction. Pollard has been acquired by Mumbai Indians for an unknown amount (anything higher the maximum bidding amount of $750,000). Kolkata Knight Riders acquired Shane Bond. Surprisingly none of the Pakistani players got any bids. Summary below:

Pollard - Maximum Amount (Mumbai Indians)
Bond - Maximum Amount (Kolkata Knight Riders)
Roach - $720,000 (Deccan Chargers)
Parnell - $610,000 (Delhi Daredevils)
Morgan - $220,000 (Royal Challengers Bangalore)
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The Theatre of the Absurd

There is something no right about the Indian Premier League Season 2 2009. Part-timers are taking hattricks, teams are losing from just winning positions, teams are winning from impossible situations and teams at the top of the (points) table are going down to teams ranked below them…

“THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD”

Rohit Sharma and Yuvraj Singh are two part time bowlers and hardly bowl for India. Yet they are the only two bowlers in this tournament to have taken hattricks. Another part-timer who has taken a decent bag of wickets is Suresh Raina. He has hardly bowled for India and has one career wicket to his name in all forms of cricket for India. Notice that all these part-timers are Indian – bizarre! Here are their statistics with the ball in this tournament (courtesy of cricinfo): Another interesting aspect of the IPL was teams either losing the game from just a commanding position or winning from near impossible situations.
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The Underperformers

So far in this Season of the Indian Premier League, we have seen the best of the players. However, we have also seen the worse of players.

The first person that comes to mind is no other than the 1.5 million dollar man, Kevin Pietersen. I won’t say too much about him as you have probably heard enough of him in the previous article:: “Sorry, but no Refunds.” Pietersen had scored 93 runs at an average of 15.50 before he went. Surely, such a performance is not worth the 1.5 million. He played the odd good shot, then predictably got himself out.

Another player who comes to mind is supposedly one of the “most destructive batsman in the world” – please stand Brendon McCullum. From 7 games, he has 50 runs at an average of 7.14 and a strike rate of 68.49. David Warner has played just one game and has already scored more runs than McCullum and in lesser balls – 51 runs at a strike rate of 127.40. C’mon Brendon! If you keep playing like this, you’re average will crawl below Chris Martin’s career batting average! What is so depressing is that he has tried different approaches to his failed and has failed in all his attempts. Read more

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