The Hindu Business Line : A different ball game for cricketers

Mumbai, Feb. 19 Some of the biggest names in world cricket will be on an entirely different wicket tomorrow — the air-conditioned auditorium of a five-star hotel in Mumbai.

There will be no cheering crowds. No umpires either. Instead, there will be a select group of people, each having a purse of up to $5 million, to decide how much each cricketer is worth, as the curtain goes up on the first-ever player auction being hosted by the DLF Indian Premier League.

Some 80 cricketers, including some of the leading names in the sport, will be put on auction that begins at 11.00 a.m. and would last for 12 hours. The eight franchisees of IPL — Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, actress Preity Zinta, RIL Ltd, GMR Holdings, Vijay Mallya’s UB Group, India Cements Ltd, Deccan Chronicle and Emerging Media — will be bidding on the players to form their separate teams.

These teams will slug it out during the 59 Twenty20 matches over 44 days beginning April 18, under the banner of DLF Indian Premier League.

Open bidding

Says Mr Lalit Modi, Chairman and Commissioner of DLF Indian Premier League: “the Governing Council of the league is pulling out all stops to ensure a free, transparent and fair bidding process for a truly historic first-ever auction of cricketers in India.”

The auction will be an open one, with each player being individually put up for bidding by the franchisees— the highest bid accepted by the auctioneer shall be the buyer at that price and the buyer gets to put the player in his team. Independent professional auctioneer Mr Richard Madley will conduct the bidding and be the sole arbiter as well.

$5-million cap

As per the rules set out by IPL, each player has an annual base player fee, at which the bidding starts. Each of the eight franchises will have a total purse of up to $5 million to spend on the auction for players for 2008 —franchisees will not be able to make a bid for a player that would take them beyond this total purse. This means at stake is a maximum pool of $40 million.

Before the auction, franchisees will be issued a list of players who will be auctioned, the composition of sets and the order in which the sets will be auctioned.

Bidders will raise a paddle to indicate a bid. And only one official bidder per franchisee will be participating in the auction. The bidding increments will be as follows – bids up to $100,000 will have increments of $ 5,000, bids from $100,000 to $ 250,000 ($ 10,000), bids from $ 250,000 to $ 500,000 ($ 25,000) and bids in excess of $ 500,000 will have increments at the auctioneer’s discretion.