BedTea.in | Ravi Matah's Blog

The Indian Premium League auction has shown that the franchises have opted for youth over experience while buying players for their respective teams.  Yes, the big guns of yester-years had no takers and the lesser known players have been bought for huge sums.

Gautam Gambhir is the highest paid at $2.4 million. Yusaf Pathan, Robin Uthappa, Rohit Sharma,  Saurabh Tewary and Yuvraj Singh have also seen an upward revision of their purse at the IPL door. As per IPL laws, only four foreign players are allowed in the playing eleven and the rest have to be Indians, as such the franchises need at least 70 Indian players who have an impact on Cricket. The franchises are, therefore, willing to shell out large sums of money to get the best out of the lot available.

Irfan Pathan, though side-lined earlier from India Test and ODI XI because of his inability to bowl consistently, has been bought for an exorbitant price of $1.9 million. (more…)

Mumbai: Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar was on Wednesday dropped from the Governing Council of the Indian Premier League as the BCCI met here for its 81st AGM, at which it was also decided to revoke the expulsion of its former chief Jagmohan Dalmiya.

The IPL governing council has been reconstituted and former India captain Sunil Gavaskar is not part of the new team, and as a consequence of an amendment to the constitution, the term of the  council has also been reduced from five years to one year.

The major overhaul of the IPL was on the cards for a long time and the Board also took the decision to withdraw their suit filed against Jagmohan Dalmiya in the Bombay High Court. Dalmiya had been expelled by the BCCI in 2006. (more…)

Why did IPL have to snub Pakistan cricket players is still not clear. The Government is non-committal and has a different version or is probably hiding behind the garb of visa-issue and/or something like that. The question is why were the names of Pakistan players included in the list of players to be auctioned – in the first place?

Shahid Afridi

Cricketers from Pakistan had participated in the first edition of IPL in 2008. Why not now? A sports-cum-political comedy of sorts has occured, which is becoming more interesting than the matches themselves.

” The participation or absence of Pakistani cricketers in a commercial event of the nature of IPL is, thus, a matter not within the purview of the Government”, says the government.

WOW!  Well said – buddy. Non-inclusion of players like Shahid Afridi and Sohail Tanvir   from the cash-rich tournament  is not understood as they both are crowd pullers and watching them is within the justified demands of the spectators. Afridi burns the stadium with the wilt of his willow and Tanveer can make many a heads roll with his balls. He is the highest wicket taker in the first IPL tourney. (more…)