IPL Auctions & Cricket’s Crorepati Club: The Happy Marriage Of Talent And Money

All of 13, and a crorepati already! Vaibhav Suryavanshi has been picked up by Rajasthan Royals for Rs 1.10 crore. The south paw from Samastipur in Bihar is the youngest player to get an IPL deal. Surprised? Now think of what you were doing at 13. Possibly plotting ways to avoid the math teacher’s cane after scoring 13 marks out of 50 or trying to convince angry parents that you are still ahead of 13 students in a class of 40.

Looking back, if cricket promised this kind of money you would have preferred honing your skills in the game rather than wasting time in preparing for the civil services or becoming a doctor or an engineer. But that was a different age. Sporting talent didn’t have the right platform to flourish and attract money, and money didn’t have the scope to multiply riding on such talent. Wonderful things are happening to sportspersons, particularly cricketers, in the country. The happy marriage of talent and money is producing millionaire players by the dozen. Thanks to the Indian Premier League, parents of children like Vaibhav can dream way beyond their station.

It’s making rags-to-riches stories commonplace. Yashasvi Jaiswal was selling paani puris and lived in a tent outside Azad Maidan cricket ground before proving his cricketing mettle. Ravindra Jadeja’s father was a watchman; Hardik and Krunal Pandya played local matches to bring food to the table; Mohd Siraj’s an autorickshaw driver, and T Natarajan’s a daily wage earner. Rinku Singh would have ended up as a sweeper if not for the Rs 80 lakh Kolkata Knight Riders contract in 2018, and it goes on. Sports surely is proving to be a great destroyer of class ceilings.

Cricket in India is producing the new super rich. The recent IPL auctions at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia witnessed franchises splurging Rs 639 crore on 182 players. Rishabh Pant was pouched by the Lucknow Super Giants for a whopping Rs 27 crore, Shreyas Iyer by Punjab for Rs 26.75 crore, and Venkatesh Iyer for Rs 23.75 crore. This is the top end. At the middle and lower ends the money is attractive too. How long would it take top players to reach Rs 50 crore? MS Dhoni was the most expensive player in 2008, the first edition of the IPL, at Rs 9.5 crore. Now another wicket keeper-batsman has touched Rs 27 crore.

Coming back to Vaibhav, his Rs 1.10 crore can only go higher, conditional upon his consistent performance. And he is barely 13. With the kind of training and exposure he would be receiving from now on, he would only get better. Talent was never in short supply in India, but it missed the right platform. Now parents not enamoured of secure jobs and confident of the abilities of their wards can take a risk. It’s a wonderful development in sports.

One hopes it creates the same conditions in other sports too. Actually, things are looking better there though money earned by players is not comparable to that of cricketers. In the Pro Kabaddi League, players Pawan Sherawat, Sachin and Maninder Singh breach the Rs 2 crore mark regularly. In the Indian Soccer League, bids for players like Anirudh Thapa, Akash Mishra, Anwar Ali and Jeakson Singh regularly cross the Rs 2.5 crore mark. But leave al one the top bracket. There are many in the Rs 1 crore zone. Not bad at all.

It’s good time to chase your passion.

(By arrangements with Perspective Bytes)