Value for Money

June 2nd, 2008

As curtains come winding down on the 44 day 59 matches Inaugural DLF IPL tournament, Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals comes out as the worthy winners registering a nerve-wracking last ball win against MS Dhoni’s Chennai Superkings in front of a packed house at Dr DY Patil Stadium leaving millions of cricket fans all across the world with shorter nails on their fingers. It’s a fairy-tale ending to one of the World’s biggest success stories in sports. Just to give you an example the BCCI who organized the event made a profit of Rs.350 Crores with just this event compared to the Rs. 235 Crores profit it made for an entire year of 2007.

IPL’s least expensive though the most expressive in terms of teamwork Rajasthan Royal which did not have single player with icon status and the best known name Graeme Smith missing in action was cool and composed while chasing Superkings’ total of 163. Sohail Tanvir showed nerves of steel while facing the last ball to get the winning run and gave a fitting tribute to his coach and the captain Shane Warne who at that time was standing at the non-strikers’ end. If at all any one deserved to win the tournament it was Shane Warne who kept so much trust and confidence in his team. In fact when asked what made the Rajasthan Royals to click in the tournament Warne said “We created an environment where players felt trusted, wanted and gave them the confidence. We encouraged them to walk on the edge. If failed, we would catch them”. Not a single word of that statement can be debated and I am sure every single player in Royals camp gleefully agrees if asked whether their individual performances can be attributed to the shrewd cricketing brain of Shane Warne.

Royals franchise at $67 million is way below the cost of other franchises which did not even reach the semi-final stage (Mumbai Indians @ $111.9m, Bangalore Royal Challengers @ 111.6m, Deccan Chargers @ 107.01 m, and Kolkata Knightriders @ $79.0m). Royals humiliated Delhi Daredevils whose franchise cost was $84m, 5th highest behind Chennai Superkings’ $91m. Superkings who did not have any problems in registering a convincing win in the other semi-final over the much fancied Kings XI Punjab whose franchise cost of $76m was second least expensive in the league was expecting much tougher fight in the final but favored to lift the trophy with a 2-0 track record of their captain Dhoni in all limited overs finals he lead a team. But with the majority of nation backing them up both in the stadium and in front of their television sets Rajasthan Royals made Superkings skipper and the most expensive player of the league, MS Dhoni, uncomfortable with his price-tag of $1.5 million, especially when a player with 1/12 of his cost in the form of Shane Watson lifting the Most Valuable Player of the tournament trophy. Shane Watson not only delivered the value for money ($125,000) but also put all the other franchise owners to go back to the drawing boards for chalking up the plans for next season.

Shane Watson, the most underrated Aussie player who could not even make it to the current Carribean tour made 472 runs from 15 games @47.20 and with a strike rate of 151.76 with 4 fifties compared to Dhoni’s 414 runs from 16 matches @ 41.40 with a strike rate of 133.54 and 2 fifties. When Watson’s 17 wickets 222.52 with an economy rate of 7.07 are put into perspective the owners of other franchises should be banging their heads to the ‘WALLS’ for the huge money they bid in the IPL auctions.

A totally unknown batsman Shaun Marsh topped the league amassing 616 runs @68.28 from just 11 matches for Kings XI Punjab at a strike rate of 139.68 with the aid of one hundred and 5 fifties. Shaun Marsh, who till the beginning of his IPL endeavor must have lived in the shadow of his father Geoff Marsh of Australia, the only cricketer to have won the World Cup both as a player and as a coach, now suddenly becomes a candidate for Australia’s struggling opening partnership for Matthew Hayden ever since the retirement of Justin Langer. Sohail Tanvir who took more wickets than any other bowler in the tournament 21 @ 10.76 from just 10 matches has also returned the best bowling figures of the tournament 6 for 14.

If not enough money is given for their value, IPL at least has given identity to players like Manpreet Gony, Shikhar Dhawan, Abhishek Nayar, Amit Mishra, Ashok Dinda, Swapnil Asnodkar Niraj Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, P Vijay Kumar, D Ravi Teja, Vidyut Sivaram Krishnan, Pragyan Ojha, Siddarth Trivedi, Shrivats Goswami, Virat Kohli and Yo Mahesh whereas Piyush Chawla, Yousuf Pathan, Irfan Pathan, Sreesanth, Gautam Gambhir lived upto their price tags and gave some notable matching contributions. Old warhorses like Jayasuria, Glen McGrath, Stephen Fleming, Shaun Pollock, Adam Gilchrist, Muthiah Muralitharan and Anil Kumble excelled in what they have done over the years for their teams and justified their price-tags with Jayasuria hitting the most number of sixes in the tournament 31.

But very sadly and unfortunately the performances of the ICON players (read as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Virendra Sewhag and MS Dhoni) not iconic at all and pales in comparison to that of their teammates who were bought at a fraction of the cost that the owners spilled to grab them. VVS Laxman must be thanking his gods that he had chosen not to go with ICON status.

Anyway, as I surmised , the IPL is proved out to be a huge success and I do not get surprised before the next season starts other Test Cricketing Nations will also join this new brand of cricket-entertainment by promoting their own leagues. I also foresee there will be lot of changes in the team compositions and all teams will be limiting their team sizes to 16 or 18 players. The tournament duration also may become shorter and in future BCCI might look for two tournaments a year with two different structures in order to keep the money flowing into their coffers.

The IPL which brought more viewers from the female population and young adults during the last one and half months and made them glued to the TV sets whether at Homes or at Sports Bars and at various clubs all across India to the extent that a second of time for commercial ads which cost the sponsors Rs. 200,000 when the tournament began was increased to a whopping Rs.1 million per second by Sony Max.

All these viewers now will be wondering how to spend their evenings as they have been very much accustomed to watching a T20 match for the last one and half months. But there is always a brighter side as this sect of population may resort back to their previous occupation (if there was one) of watching movies which might make the only complainers of the IPL happy i.e., the film producers, distributors and exhibitors. The collections of the film releases during the last 45 days which were not as they expected will no doubt be boosted by the culmination of the Country’s biggest domestic cricketing event in the history.

The only major Telugu release of last week, Pandurangadu also might benefit a lot from the lack of cricket in the evenings. But families who go to the theatres to watch the movie along with their children or parents expecting a out and out devotional film in the similar lines of Annamaya and Sree Ramadasu, should exercise caution as you have to endure an overdose of rakthi in the first half to enjoy the last forty five minutes of bhakthi and mukthi. But you are guaranteed to get more value for money if your intention is not to get immersed in devotion.

Cricket and Cinema: My passion and obsession:
.• Bujjigadu & Superkings - Made in Chennai
.• Influence of Great Cricketers and Actors Spurs Wins
.• The Story of two halves in Cricket and Cinema
.• Allu Arjun’s Top Class and Rajasthan Royals Top of the table performances
.• Style and Substance
.• Krazzy 4 IPL
.• JALSA on Celluloid and on Cricket minefield
.• Cricket and Cinema connections

About Vijay Jeedigunta: Vijay Saradhi Jeedigunta is a great fan of Cinema and Cricket and follows them as passoinately as any other Indian in spite of living in US for last 14 years. He Lived in Hyderabad,Graduated from Osmania in Electrical Engg and worked for Allwyn and Dr. Reddy's Labs before moving to USA in 1994. Before going to US he worked on some Doordarshan Documentaries and won the best TV Reviewer award for his Eenadu column called 'Cinnithera Chidvilasam'. He also had small stints as All India Radio's Official Statistician for Reliance Cup and some ODIs and Test matches. He was also a frequent contributor to Deccan Chronicle in their weekly sports page. He lives in Bridgewater, NJ with his wife and children. Currenlty employed by IBM as Managing consultant, he spends his spare time writing for dreamcricket.com. He also participates in a weekly radio show on cricket for EBCRADIO (1170 AM) in New Jersey. To know more about him you can visit his profile on orkut at http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=15920368379975419443 and his cricket blog http://cricketestats.blogspot.com You can send all your inquiries and suggestions to [email protected]