Cricket Goes Cash Crazy

Thursday, February 21st, 2008 @ 9:54 am | Sport

Well, it’s finally happened - India have finally put beyond doubt any questions that they are the powerhouse in international cricket.

Yesterday at a packed auction room in Bombay, the cream of the world’s cricketers were auctioned off to play in the inaugural IPL (Indian Premier League) Twenty20 competition.Â With a TV deal worth $1bn to play with, the owners of the franchises weren’t afraid of splashing the cash around.Â In a brash and bold move, the players put themselves forward for auction and are sold to the highest bidder with a 3 year contract to play in the competition.

There was a great article in The Age today about the bidding process.Â Shane Warne was snapped up for not a penny over his reserve price of $450k, and there were mumblings of an anti-Australian conspiricy after the spat between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds, where Harbhajan definately did *not* call Symo a “Monkey”.Â As the auction progressed, even Mr Cricket himself, Michael Hussey failed to get bought (unlike his brother, David who has been scoring runs for fun for Victoria, including a brutal 60 ball ton yesterday) as well as Glenn McGrath and tounges started to wag.Â Ponting - “only” $400k.Â They needen’t have worried - Andrew Symonds attracted the second highest bid of the day - a massive $1.35m, surpassed only by poster boy Mahindra Singh Dhoni at $1.5m.Â Unsuprisingly, Indian favourite and all round nice guy Brett Lee went for a cool $900k - if you haven’t seen his Indian Pop Video - you really should! Click here to check it out.

I can’t help but think it’s a blessing in disgiuse that English players aren’t eligible, I can’t seem many of them attracting this sort of excitement (although they might have gone nuts over KP!) but that’s no bad thing really.

Whilst traditionalists might complain that this just “isn’t cricket”, if you’re mouth doesn’t water at the thought of a packed Indian stadium in Hyderbad playing host to a batting line up that could read something like…

Gibbs, Gilchrist, Laxman, Symonds, Afridi, Styris, Silva, Vaas, Zoyza, RP Singh, Sharma then there’s something wrong with you.

Whilst on the subject of cricket, after England’s thrilling tie yesterday with NZ I’m off to Christchurch on Saturday to see if we can tie the series - should be a good one!Â If you’re watching keep an eye out for my Hyde United flag, and I’ll do a whistle as the first spin bowler of each innings walks back to his mark - so you might even hear me!