Do players get the right value for their talent in the IPL?
Indian Premier League (IPL) once again minted some fresh crorepatis out of little-known, domestic cricketers via its bidding-based auction system. It’s been a recurrent theme at the IPL auctions for many years now. Perfectly sane, brilliant minds sitting on the round tables at the auction somehow get triggered by the sight a cricketer and can’t stop themselves from continuously lifting the paddle up (if you haven’t seen the auction, that’s how bidding is done) until something, or someone, break the mysterious spell and make them stop.
How else would one make sense of the big money spent on acquiring players who are yet to prove themselves at the top level and may not necessarily make it to the playing eleven? And how would one rationalize the fact that an unproven talent is getting more money than an established performer?
The most expensive uncapped player (one who hasn’t played international cricket) in the recent auction was Sameer Rizvi, a righthanded middle-order batsman. Rizvi was picked by Chennai Super Kings (CSK) for `8.4 crore, which will give him more money than the more illustrious names like Moeen Ali, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shardul Thakur, Shivam Dube Mitchell Santner and Devon Conway, to name a few.
Rizvi must be a good talent to command such a price.
In T20s, he averages 49 and strikes at 134. For a middle-order batsman, it’s a good return. But nothing extraordinary.
His recent exploits in the UP T20 League where he scored 455 runs, including two centuries, and hit the most number of sixes probably made the IPL teams notice his talent and take a punt on him. But, at the end of the day, it is a state league and only one season old. Had he repeated the same success over a couple of seasons, that would have
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