Players v/s owners at the IPL

One aspect of the IPL that I've been really curious about is the relationship between the players and the franchise owners.

The first time I thought about it was when Sachin Tendulkar showed interest in having a stake in the Mumbai franchise. At that time, the BCCI did not allow it because it decreed that a playing member couldn't be a shareholder of the team.

It is bizarre that a BCCI official can own stake in an IPL team since Sharad Pawar, as BCCI President, ruled in N Srinivasan's favour. According to Pawar, the franchise bid was by a company and Srinivasan was not a bidder in his individual capacity. Hence, there was no conflict of interest.

Now that argument against having players own equity in the franchise sounds so stupid and outdated. Many organizations, across sectors, provide some sort of equity (sweat or otherwise!), in order to retain and motivate their employees. It makes a lot of sense that players have equity in the franchise.

All that Sachin Tendulkar had to do was to setup a company in someone else's name, and convince Mukesh-bhai and Nina-ben to sell some of their stake to the new company. Alternately, he would need to have a relative own equity in say Teesta Retail Pvt. Ltd.. I'd hardly be surprised if he was not a shareholder, directly or indirectly, in Mumbai Indians.

It does seem to me, based on a couple of reports & interviews in the last 24 hours or so, that the team owners exercise a disproportionate influence on the team, especially on cricketing matters.

Were Chennai Super Kings' selection & on-field decisions influenced by an astrologer who Srinivasan and Srikkanth fervently believe in?

Dhoni does brush it under the carpet, saying that superstition is part of cricket. I think NDTV had an interview with Hayden yesterday, where he was non-committal about the practices bordering on occult.

Shilpa Shetty sounds as close to arrogant as possible when the CNBC-TV18 interviewer asks her "How does the team react to you". She raises her eyebrow and haughtily says "We are the owners, they're nice to us".

If there is a trend here of owners thinking they are superior to the players, or that they can control everything about the game, it's not really good news especially considering there will be a fresh auction next year.

Even if the IPL rules say that a franchise can retain a certain number of India internationals, foreign players, etc., there is nothing that stops a player from choosing to participate in the player auction in 2011.

Players who are frustrated with their team management or owners will leave. Their contract period is over. It is one of the fundamental principles of a free market.

Labels: indian premier league, ipl 2010

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:02 AM | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s) | Related posts
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What is the point of this exercise, BCCI?

Earlier today, Lalit Modi was suspended from his post as IPL commissioner. He has 15 days to respond to respond to the charges. As of now, he remains the IPL chairman.

I'm hardly surprised that a a certain website whose domain he effectively owns continues to list him as chairman and commissioner.

Chirayu Amin, one of the BCCI Vice Presidents, has been appointed the interim IPL commissioner. He is a chairman of Alembic Ltd, a publicly listed company.

But the point of this entire exercise needs to be questioned. The governing council remains as it is (except for Chirayu in, Lalit out) despite them being party to every single decision that was taken. BCCI President Shashank Manohar claimed today that it was not the responsibility of the governing council but that of the CEO & IMG.

With one stroke, he exonerated himself, from the issue as well. Interestingly enough, even before any sort of findings are announced by the investigations by various authorities into various aspects around the IPL, he exonerates Sharad Pawar of any wrong-doing.

Should we be surprised? After all, he is closely linked to Sharad Pawar. Shashank Manohar's father was the advocate general of Maharashtra when Sharad Pawar was the Chief Minister.

I'm assuming that Mr. VR Manohar is one of India's top legal eagles. If not, maybe it is just a coincidence that VR Manohar represented Harbhajan Singh during Judge Hansen's hearing in January 2008.

While we're at it, Chirayu Amin should disclose any sort of relationship that his company has with Shashank Manohar, perhaps as one of their legal advisers. I'd really not be surprised if that was the case.

Labels: bcci, indian premier league, ipl 2010

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:39 PM | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s) | Related posts
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Johnson Cherian, Lalit Modi and a couple of domains

Over 3 years ago, I'd written about one of the BCCI's domains - bcciratings.com. The domain was registered under a name 'Johnson Cherian'. I now notice that the domain has Lalit Modi as an administrative and technical contact.

Tinu Cherian reckons that the ownership details of iplt20.com changed on 19 April.

I don't think his reasoning is right. The 'Updated 1 hour ago' entry he points to merely indicates that the whois server fetched the data 1 hour ago. Just click on the "Refresh" link to see the last update details change.

But yes, the larger issue is that iplt20.com and clt20.com (the Champions Twenty20 League domain) are owned by someone from Modi Entertainment Network, even though the BCCI's address is provided.

So, is Johnson Cherian someone who works for Lalit Modi at the BCCI office? He does seem to work at Modi Entertainment Network, since he is listed as the administrative contact for modi.com as well.

In passing, you can actually go and buy the iplt20.com domain. The whois record indicates the domain expired over a month ago.

For the record, just in case the ownership data changes, here's what the whois information looks like:

iplt20.com

Registrant
Email:
Organization: BCCI/IPL
Address: CRICKET CENTER,WANKHEDE STADIUM,CHURCHGATE
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Country: IN
Postal Code: 400020
Phone: +91.2222800300
Fax:
Name: bcci ipl

Domain : iplt20.com

Administrative Contact :
Name: bcci
Organization: BCCI/IPL
Address: CRICKET CENTER,WANKHEDE STADIUM,CHURCHGATE
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Postal Code: 400020
Country: IN
Phone: +91.2222800300
Fax: 0
Email:

Technical Contact :
Name: bcci
Organization: BCCI/IPL
Address: CRICKET CENTER,WANKHEDE STADIUM,CHURCHGATE
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Postal Code: 400020
Country: IN
Phone: +91.2222800300
Fax: 0
Email:

Created on.......: 2008-03-14
Expired on.......: 2012-03-14
Last updated on..: 2009-01-14

clt20.com

Registrant :
Email:
Organization: NA
Address: BCCI,Cricket Center,Churchgate
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Country: IN
Postal Code: 400020
Phone: +91.1111111
Fax:
Name: Lalit Modi

Domain : clt20.com

Administrative Contact :
Name: Lalit
Organization: NA
Address: BCCI.Cricket Center,Churchgate
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Postal Code: 400020
Country: IN
Phone: +91.2266637373
Fax: 0
Email:

Technical Contact :
Name: Lalitk
Organization: NA
Address: BCCI.Cricket Center,Churchgate
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Postal Code: 400025
Country: IN
Phone: +91.2266637373
Fax: 0
Email:

Created on.......: 2009-02-05
Expired on.......: 2013-02-05
Last updated on..: 2010-01-12

Labels: conflict of interest, domain, indian premier league, ipl 2010, lalit modi, website

Thus spake Jagadish @ 12:50 AM | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s) | Related posts
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A strong link between the IPL and the T20 World Cup

Based on statistical evidence^*, Mumbai or Bangalore will win the IPL and 11 out of the 16 teams playing in the T20 World Cup have no chance of winning the World Cup.

Here're the damning statistics:

• Mumbai or Bangalore will win the 2010 IPL tournament. The previous 2 editions have been won by Jaipur (league topper) and Hyderabad (4th on the league table).
  
• The only sides with a reasonable chance of success at the T20 World Cup are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ireland, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. The World Cup winning side has never included even a single player who played in the preceding IPL tournament.
  
• Based on current evidence from IPL tournaments preceding a T20 World Cup (sample size: 1), the top 2 run-getters are usually not good enough (or too old) to even feature in their national side's squad. So, the only consequence of Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma hitting a real purple (orange?) patch is that they will eventually not play at the 2010 T20 World Cup. The only other real contenders are Herschelle Gibbs and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, but they'd need to score something like 300+ runs across 2 innings to race to the top of the 2010 IPL run-getters list.
  
• 3 out of the top 5 wicket-takers at an IPL event played in a T20 World Cup that immediately followed. Hence, at least one out of Pragyan Ojha, Amit Mishra and Irfan Pathan will definitely be called up to play at the World Cup. The first one to have a confirmed ticket booking on a trans-Pacific flight, or willing to travel by road, will get the nod.
  
• West Indies will continue a rich tradition of the hosts (1996 World Cup and 2002 Champions Trophy being examples) never winning a 'World Cup' like event. In much the same manner that the 'home' team has never won an IPL to date.

* - All data is valid as of before the first semi-final of the 2010 IPL event

Labels: indian premier league, ipl 2010, prediction, statistic, twenty20, twenty20 world cup

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:39 PM | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s) | Related posts
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Choking at the IPL

Everytime I see a team screw up a chase at the IPL, I wonder what is it that causes batsmen to choke in a T20 chase.

To a large extent, it is because of the huge pressure on batsmen to succeed. Like several worthy commentators have pointed out, the bowler is really under no real pressure. More often than not, he expects to be tonked around and is reconciled to conceding 8-9 runs an over with the hope of picking up at least 1 top order wicket.

However, a top order batsman is expected to smack it around at a strike rate of at least 150. Every dot ball increases the pressure. A batting effort of 30 in 20 balls with 5x4 and 1x6 looks excellent. Except that the batsman actually scored only 4 runs off the 14 balls that he didn't hit a boundary. This potentially means he had at least 10 dot balls, i.e. he wasted 70% of the balls he faced.

Let's define the set of circumstances that describe how a team chokes while chasing.

• The score being chased isn't ridiculously high (e.g. in excess of 180)
  
• The team is at a fairly comfortable position halfway through the chase (e.g. a required run rate of 9-10 with 7-8 wickets in hand)
  
• The team is fairly well placed with 5 overs to go (e.g. a required run rate of 11-12 with 5 wickets in hand)

In the 2008 IPL tournament, there were 11 such games. In 2009, the number was 13. So far, in 2010, there have been 7 instances of a chasing team 'choking'. It seems quite likely, given there are another 19 games to go, that we'll end up with a similar number of chokes this year as well. Maybe there's a better way to force batsman into taking more responsibility to finish off games - like we wrote over 5 years ago about Twenty20

I think one option would be to have Twenty-20 games with 11 players but only six are allowed to bat, not all eleven.

The main problem that the IPL will face is the number of mismatches. This year alone, there have been at least 20 games where the result was known before the last over of the game started. Somehow, winning margins of 20+ runs, 7 wkts etc. don't seem right for this truncated format. If we extrapolate a winning margin of 20+ runs (say chasing 180) into the 50 over game, it amounts to something like scoring 280 when the target was 320 - a sound thrashing. The debate over which team will lose the most number of games is over. Mohali has lost 8, and have 3 more to play. This means they could end up with 11 losses (from 14 games). Hyderabad is the only other team that could get to 10 (won 4, lost 6 with 4 games to go).

Whoever voted for the Mohali franchise wins themselves a gift voucher for a 2 week fitness programme to be conducted by Yuvraj Singh, Yusuf Abdulla and Ramesh Powar. Sreesanth will be a special guest and he will conduct aerobics sessions for 2 days. VLCC is one of the team sponsors.

In other news, I find it baffling that the various commentators, ex-cricketers, administrators, etc. who protested against the absence of any bids for Pakistani players during the last IPL auction have missed out one very obvious fact - Sri Lankan cricketers are being sidelined at IPL 2010.

The Sri Lankan players in this tournament are Murali, Thushara, Perera, Vaas, Maharoof, Dilshan, Jayawardene, Sangakkara, Mathews, Mendis, Jayasuriya and Malinga. All teams have played 10 games by now. Only Murali, Maharoof, Sangakkara, Jayawardene, Mathews and Malinga have played 6 or more games. Chaps like Dilshan, Vaas, Mendis and Jayasuriya have been sidelined with no-one protesting!

To paraphrase Lord Tennyson, is it better to have been picked and left out than not to have been picked at all?

Labels: indian premier league, ipl 2010, twenty20

Thus spake Jagadish @ 12:48 AM | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s) | Related posts
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