sport – Page 14 – Pertinent Observations

Betting as a hedge

Today’s Business Standard reports that ESPNStar and their advertisers stand to lose significantly following India’s early exit from the T20 World Cup. However, the situation now is significantly better off than in the 2007 World Cup where India didn’t even enter the super8. Back then, India had played a grand total of 3 matches out of a maximum possible 11 before they got knocked out. And thanks to India’s exit, interest in the rest of the tournament had also waned, leading to significant losses for SETMax, etc.

The situation this time round is significantly better than the last time – since India has gone out only after the second stage. Given that after today’s games the only games are the semis and the finals, I don’t expect the channel and the advertisers to lose as much.

Nevertheless, my mind goes back to a post that I had written back when India went out of the 2007 World Cup following its loss to Bangladesh. I had suggested the following as an “immoral solution”.

It is clear that Ireland is in the super eight, so nothing can be done about that. However, there is still a ray of hope in group B (india?s group). I know it is illegal, but wouldn?t it make sense for a consortium of say SET, Tata SKY, LG and maybe tourism departments of West Indian governments to offer money to Bangladesh and ask them to lose to Bermuda? ?you have done a fantastic job so far in the world cup. You?ve beaten India. Must be a very proud moment for your country. Can you please take this money now and leave, so that the rest of the world cup can go on? We would be better off without you!?

However, the chance to implement the immoral solution is past us this time around. So let me come to the “one legal solution” that I’d suggested:

By buying broadcast rights for a major tournament such as a world cup, you are unwittingly betting on the results of a few matches. Betting that the country where you’ll broadcast will do well. Betting that there aren’t too many major upsets. Betting that results will follow a certain pattern. You know you can’t affect the results, so the next best thing is to hedge!

Go to Ladbrokes, and take the opposite position. Bet, and bet well so as to limit your losses in case some results don’t go according to plan. Maybe you’re not very good at betting, and after all it?s not your core competence. Not to worry. I’m sure some good investment banker would come up with a product with returns linked to the results of a few matches. He will provide you a product with which all the implicit bets you’ve taken will be hedged. And he will go to Ladbrokes and hedge his position by taking positions there. And charge you a small premium for it. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Betting on sport is not a purely speculative activity. Of course there are a lot of people who speculate on sports, but these people also speculate by buying and selling stocks and bonds. Betting can also be an extremely useful hedging tool. If only it were to be made legal in India, I’m sure a lot of our corporates will end up being better off. And typically taxes on betting are high, and so the government will also have its share.

Can someone please convince the people in the finance ministry, or whatever is the concerned ministry, about this, and to legalize betting? I’m sure there is significant value to be unlocked.

IPL Fixing

If Chennai beat Punjab today, then both RCB and DC will go through to the semis. Right now all three teams (Punjab, Bangalore, Hyd) are on 14 points and Punjab has a significantly lower NRR than the other two. So irrespective of who wins tomorrow’s game, it is likely that both are going to go through.

If Punjab lose tonight, then Kumble and Gilly can sit down and “cut the IPL melon” and decide among themselves who wants to face Chennai and who wants to face Delhi. And fix tomorrow’s match accordingly. As long as either RCB wins or if DC doesn’t win by a big margin, both go through. Splendid stuff.

Which is why, in football, in all leagues all last round games are played simultaneously. This happened after in the 1982 world cup, Germany and Austria figured out that as long as Germany would win 1-0, both would go through to the quarters ahead of Algeria. So Germany scored quickly, and then both they and Austria just passed the ball around for the rest of the game and chucked out Austria Algeria.

however, the iPL is more about money and about TRPs than about real competition so we are unlikely to see the last four games being played simultaneously.

Update

Ok so through some expert analysis I’ve come to the following conclusion after yesterday’s games.

1. Deccan Chargers are through irrespective of today’s result

2. Royal Challengers Bangalore can also be through even if they lose. All they need to make sure is that if Deccan bats first, then the margin of victory is not more than 75 runs. If Bangalore bats first, they need to make sure that Deccan takes at least 10 overs to reach the target.

Note that these numbers are approximate and will vary with the exact score that is made. But these two numbers can be taken as a ballpark.

Bottomline is that unless RCB mess up royally, Punjab are on their way home.

Needed: An Indian Plate League

The problem with the IPL is that there is little disincentive for doing badly. There are a total of eight teams. Each of them has a reasonable number of saleable cricketers. These cricketers’ salaries are orthogonal to their skills, and their expected contribution to the game. Irrespective of how badly a team does, the one-team-per-city rule means that there are enough people who will support it. That there is only one game at a time means that everyone will watch it, irrespective of how you do.

(I had writtne a lot more but for some reason it didn’t get saved due to some connection issues. so re-writing; may not come out too well)

The argument here is that there is no disincentive in the IPL for not doing well. However badly you do, you get the same television audience (maybe slightly lower). You get in crowds for your home games. You have a natural support base which is sticky. The players want to do well, yes. But from the point of the team owner, revenue maximization is not really correlated with performance.

Hence we need an Indian Plate League. 8 more teams slugging it out in a division below. Every year bottom 2 teams of Premier and top two teams of Plate swap places. Plate games happen on same days as Premier, maybe at a less attractive time. The 8 Plate teams that will be initially sold can evven be from the same cities as the existing Premier teams (not all of them of course – some of the larger hitherto unrepresented cities – such as Ahmedabad – deserve teams) – and that will put more pressure on teams to do well – since there is no guaranteed support base.

Existence of a Plate League, and the concept of relegation will mean huge losses for a team that goes under. Obviously not as many people will watch Plate games compared to Premier. Gate receipts might also be lesser – but it need not be since some cities which are still not served by the IPL will come into the picture then. Merchandise sales for the plate teams will also be much lower – kids wouldn’t want to run around wearing jerseys of “loser” teams. And there is also the reputation risk for the owners if their teams go under.

All in all, the existence of a second rung and the concept of relegation and promotion will definitely increase the quality of cricket on offer. Team owners will now suddenly have to make sure their teams perform, and greater care will be taken in team selection, strategy, etc. Quotas will go, and players will come in on merit (the <=4 foreigners rule should remain, though – thatz the only way Indian youngsters will be able to benefit from the IPL). Ridiculous concepts such as picking teams based on talent hunts will go. Teams will become more serious about the whole tournament.

Of course there will be opposition from the owners of the existing teams, since the threat of relegation will automatically reduce all of their valuations. However, for the sake of quality of cricket, and to make the event more sustainable, the BCCI would do well to create a plate league – after all, that is going to bring in more money also, right?

(once again i apologize for the quality of writing in this post. The original that I’d written got wiped out due to a horrible netwrok (some problem wiht my wifi). This is the recreation of what I intended to say. The thought remains, but not the expression.)

IPL

It’s day one of the second edition of IPL and I’m already loving it. As has already been said by several people several times on Twitter today, it’s quite fitting that the three best performances of the day have come from Tendulkar, Dravid and Kumble. The second match was extremely strong, even from a neutral perspective, and was very refreshing after the batfest that had been the first edition of the IPL.

One major blessing in disguise of moving the tournament to South Africa is the change in conditions – which is likely to lead to better cricket – in the sense of a better contest between bat and ball. Last year’s tournament was a joke in terms of the quality of cricket. There was absolutely nothing in it for the bowlers, and then they put NED after that and made things worse for themselves. Hopefully this promising start will lead to a better effort by bowlers this time round and we’ll have more games like the second one.

I’ve always maintained that the best ODIs are defences of low to moderate scores. The ideal ODI, in my opinion, will have the team batting first making 200-225, taking early wickets and putting pressure on the second team so that it ends up as a tight game (don’t care who wins). Sadly, the pitches they have been making nowadays seem to be creating 300+ games only which is why I’ve stopped watching ODIs.

Coming to the games today, the main mistake that Chennai Super Kings made was with respect to their batting order. A lot of people maintain that they messed up their team selection, and I agree with them – I would definitely have put in Vijay and Balaji instead of Parthiv and Joginder. But even the team that they started off wiht wasn’t too bad, where they messed up was in the chase.

When you are chasing a reasonably moderate total like 166 (equivalent to 250 in ODIs), you don’t need to pinch hit. I know Sri Lanka did that when they won WC96, but I’m more of a fan of Pakistan’s method in WC92 which is to first build a base and then have hitters coming in lower down the order to capitalize. Similarly, chasing 166 with Hayden at one end, what was required was a proper batsman at the other, and Dhoni sent in Flintoff. I think the match might have been sealed there.

It is all about slotting people into the right roles. Having Badrinath and Flintoff in the same team makes sense, but the role for each needs to be well-defined. Badrinath is an excellent “holding batsman” (the same role in which Dravid and Tendulkar excelled in today – and the role that Tendulkar plays in ODIs nowadays) – someone to hold one end up and rotate the strike while batsmen at the other end go for it, but he is incapable of slogging if he comes in with a large required run rate and not much time. And CSK didn’t desperately need to slog when Raina got out – all they needed was some consolidation and for one guy to stay while Hayden accelerated.

Similarly, when you look at Rajasthan’s lineup, you will notice that there are very few “proper batsmen” in the line-up, and a large number of “hitters”. How many people in the Rajasthan XI would you count on batting for you within the first 30 overs of an ODI? I can count Smith, Asnodkar and NK Patel, and maybe Ravindra Jadeja. The rest of the “batsmen” in their lineup (Pathan, Henderson, Mascarenhas) are all essentially hitters. And when conditions are not ideal for hitting, you can come unstuck.

If things continue to go the way they did today, teams will need to re-think their strategies. The slam-bang approach of last year won’t work and they will need to move towards “proper cricket”. Have proper batsmen and proper bowlers and proper keepers rather than having bits and pieces guys, and fill-in guys. Let’s see how things pan out.

I hereby predict that if things continue to go this way, Rajasthan Royals will recall Mohammed Kaif. Also, you might have noticed Uthappa shouting out to Kumble in Kannada about what to bowl (he frequently shouted “kaal muri” which literally translates to “leg break”). And that the Bangalore team has 5 guys from Bangalore – which perhaps enables them to indulge in this kind of “cipher”.

Fighter Batsmen and Stud Bowlers

Insight of the day: Batting is inherently fighter and bowling is inherently stud. Of course there are severral stud batsmen (eg. Sehwag) and fighter bowlers (eg. Giles) but if you look at it broadly – a batsman needs to get it right every ball, while a bowler needs only one ball to succeed.

The fundamental idea is that bowling success can be more lumpy than batting success – for example the maximum that a batsman can do if he has one great over is to score 36 runs – whcih in the context of the average game won’t amount to much. However, if a bowler has one great over and picks up six wickets, the impact is tremendous.

The bowler can afford to be much more inconsistent than the batsman. He might get a few balls wrong, but he can suddenly make an impact on the game. For a batsman to have a significant impact, however, he should be able to carry it on for a significant amount of time. An “impulse” (a large force acting for a small time period) will do the batting team no good, while it can be a tremendous boost for the bowling team. On the other hand, steady unimaginative play by the batsman is good enough, while a bowler needs to necessarily show patches of spectacularity to have an impact.

Hence, batting is fighter and bowling is stud.

However, what the advent of one day cricket has done is to invert this. By limiting the number of overs, and creating conditions where a team need not be bowled out, it has turned things upside down. Of course, a stud performance by a bowler (say a hat-trick) can have a significant impact on the game, but inconsistent and wayward bowling is likely to cost the bowling team significantly more than it does in Test cricket.

Similarly, with the game getting shorter, an impulse by the batsman (say a quick 40 by Sehwag) has a much larger impact on the game than it does in Test cricket. And on the other hand, dour batting – which is so useful in Tests – may actually be a liability in ODIs. Similarly the mantra for bowlers has become containment, and thus fighterness in bowlers has a greater impact – and so people now do respect bowlers who can bowl long spells without taking wickets, but just containing.

Remember that even now, to succeed in Test cricket, you need to have the correct characteristic – Sehwag’s batting might appear stud and risky, but he has the ability to play really long innings which is why he is a really good Test batsman. If he didn’t have the “longevity gene”, he would’ve still remained a one-day wonder. Yes – now teams do pick a fourth bowler to do the “holding role” – keeping one end tight while others attack. Still, the holding guy needs to have some ability to pick up wickets by himself.

Preliminary reading on studs and fighters theory:

Studs and Fighters

Extending the studs and fighters theory

Why is Ten Sports sitting on so many rights?

I wanted to stay up last night. I wanted to stay up and watch the WI-Eng match till the very end. Waking up this morning and checking the scorecard, it seems like it was a really good match. And Fidel Edwards seems to have become a last-day-shutdown specialist. This is the second time this series he’s hung on. And he’d done so once before against India at ARG.

There was another reason I wanted to stay up last night. I wanted to watch Liverpool play Real Madrid. I woke up this morning and saw that it was an amazing game, too. Looking through the Guardian Football site (btw, Advani seems to be advertising heavily on that site; it’s a pity he never advertises here on my site) I noticed that Chelski-Juve was also a strong game, despite the result. Another reason I would’ve wanted to stay up last night. For the record, I slept at 12:10. Tea-time in the Test match, and before either of the football games had started.

Ten Sports seems to have bitten off more than it can chew. It seems to own the rights to telecast too many different things. I think I have raised this point once earlier, but it pzzles me as to what Ten Sports is trying to achieve by getting rights to telecast so many things, most of which are happening at the same time. For example, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been unable to watch the first hour of WI-Eng even if I’d wanted to, because it was overlapping with the last hour of SA-Aus, which was being telecast at the same time.

The reason I slept off early last night was because I didn’t have the option to watch what I wanted. All the three games that I’d’ve been reasonably interested in were supposed to be on Ten Sports (Zee Sports doesn’t count since Tata Sky doesn’t offer that), and I realized that I’d be forced to watch what the guys at the Taj Entertainment Network would want me to watch. Denied the option to choose what I wanted to watch, I went to bed.

It puzzles me that Ten Sports isn’t subletting its contracts. Devoid of anything decent to show, I suppose that ESPN or NEO would’ve only been too happy to acquire the rights to telecast last night’s Liv-Real game by paying a fee to Ten Sports. And it would’ve unlocked value at the hands of the remote-holder. Ten Sports need not let go of the rights to show all the games. All they need to do is to sell the “out of money options” – the rights to the game which they won’t be able to telecast anyway.

Now, the problem will be if accounting for all costs, no options are out of money. For example, you know you won’t be able to show Liv-Real. But you think that the loss of brand equity of your channel would exceed the money you’d gain by selling this option to another willing channel. The viewers are the only losers at this game, but I don’t know what can be done. After all, viewers are way too dispersed in order for them to take any kind of action.

Extending this question, what can a sports body do to prevent a bidder from acquiring rights to telecast and then mess up the telecast (or not telecast it at all) ? After all, the sports body is out there to make as much money as possible from the TV rights, and they need to ensure significant investment into broadcasting by the broadcasters, so the “i’ll give rights to only those channels that are in the interest of the people” model won’t work.

One option would be to sell the rights to two channels in each market. But given that broadcast is a natural monopoly, the sports body will not be able to make as much by selling to two bidders as it can by selling to one bidder. Is there any other solution that you can think of? If yes, unleash.

50% Stake Sale

It’s finally happening. My mother has decided for good that I’m unable to manage all of myself, and hence I should divest 50% in myself. “The better half”, she says. She has been utterly disgusted due to my utter failure, and lack of effort, in conducting this divestiture by myself, and has now decided to take matters into her own hands.

Her second sister, along with her husband, has been appointed the lead investment banker for this deal. My mother’s eldest sister is going to be the chief scout in order to scout for possible counterparties to the deal. It is preferred, and desirable, that there be a single buyer for this entire 50%, and the current understanding is that if we are not able to tie up any good single investor, we will rather postpone the sale rather than going in for an IPO and selling the stake in bits and pieces to retail investors.

Thinking about it, I wonder if it is technically correct to call this a stake sale, since I don’t plan to take any dowry. Maybe if you take all costs into consideration, and not just the monetary ones, and if you assume payment to be a continuous thing rather than like a lumpsum (these investment bankers, they can arrange just about anything), it won’t be inaccurate to call this process a stake sale.

Usually, in these circumstances, most of the work is done by the bankers, but it seems that in this case that I, as the person divesting the stake, will need to put in considerable effort. The effort that I was too lazy to put when I was supposed to be trying to do the deal myself, without any asssistance from any bankers. Actually this is something that a lot of companies that indulge in M&A transactions forget about.

Think about your own incentives and the banker’s incentive. For the banker, this is just a deal. All they are caring for is to find a buyer for your sale, and a seller for anyone who wishes to buy stake. Once the deal is through and the cheques and documents signed, they ask you to sign on a set of fairly heavy cheques, and walk away; job done. It is you, as the company who is selling the stake, who has to deal with the new investor for maybe the rest of your life – transaction costs in these kind of deals are high, and it is preferable it be done exactly once.

One thing I realize is that the effort required here is of a different nature to the one that you need to put when in the market without bankers’ support. In the latter case, you need to engage in an elaborate ritual of tiki–taka, slowly moving towards the goal, and then unleashing a shot at the right moment. It is a well-respected and common algorithm, and any attempts to side-step it, and use short-cuts, usually end in disasters.

In the banked world, though, one thing is clear – you are sitting in that conference room together in order to strike a long-term deal, and not for a random networking meeting. All parties in the conference room are aware that the reason they are all sitting there, together, is so that they can work out a long-term deal. And thus, explicitly mentioning the deal, and explicitly working towards it, are not frowned upon – like it sometimes is in the outside market. You don’t need an y tiki-taka here. Tiki-taka is also seen as a waste of time. You better follow a direct approach and just put the ball in the box and then have a striker shoot it.

And remember that in such brokered deals, there is usually no goalkeeper.

PS: I need photos of myself for the offer document. I realize that I dont’ have too many of those. I’m not too narcissistic in my photography exploits, and I dont’ bother to collect pics that others have taken of me, and hence the shortage. Last night, my mother looked through my facebook pictures and pronounced each of them as “useless”. So, if you have good pictures of me, plis to be sending me. If you dont know my email ID, just leave a comment here and I’ll give you my email ID.

Yet Another QLC?

An article I was reading on Cricinfo a few minutes back had this line:

Taylor sat quietly beside his captain, no doubt trying to soak up the moment.

Thinking about it, I realize it’s been a long time since I’ve had such a moment. A moment which had a sense of achievement, where I just sat, quiet, trying to soak up the moment. It’s not that I haven’t felt this way before; it is just that this kind of thing hasn’t happened for a long time. And looking forward, there doesn’t seem to be much scope for this kind of a thing.

It seems like life has been reduced to short occasional moments of intellectual wankery, and nothing surronding them. Life seems to have become, to an extent, mechanical. It doesn’t seem like there is anything on the horizon which will give a sense of achievement. It seems like whatever good I will do will be slow and incremental; like an innings by Shivnarine Chanderpaul; rather than like a hostile spell of pace bowling by Jerome Taylor.

I’m only twenty six, and occasionally I have trouble convincing myself that I’m ONLY twenty six, and that twenty six isn’t that old, after all. When this brought up in conversations, most people like to comment that it is time for me to get married. I’m not sure if the tenure matching on that is right. Apart from perhaps one “achievement moment” when I finally end up successfully pataofying someone, I don’t see how that will solve the problem that I have described here.

Thinking about it yet again, I wonder if this “achievement model” is faulty and unsustainable, and if I should reorient myself to work towards incremental benefits. Kodhi (ok before I forget, I should credit him for the discussion that led to this post) said “Tendulkar of 98 is not the same as Tendulkar of 08”. It was a poignant comparison.

Maybe a time comes for everyone – when this time occurs is not a matter of importance, and varies across people – when ticking off achievements is not the priority, and priority is to just go on and do one’s duty (which, in Tendulkar’s case, is to play excellent cricket, and win matches for India). It is not exactly an encouraging thought, but is probably true. What do you think?

Rafa and the Ranatunga Principle

Today seems to be a massive theory session. In the morning, I introduced you to the Mata Amrita Index. Now, as I write this watching the third set of (ok it’s the third set now – when I’m starting to write. for all you know, by the time I finish this, the match might be over) the Australian Open, I think it is a good time for me to introduce to you the Ranatunga Principle of energy management.

The Ranatunga principle states that:

When you don’t need to run, walk.

Yes, it is that simple. And if played an instrumental part in Sri Lanka’s victory in the 1996 Cricket world cup. Arjuna Ranatunga, the captain, was a massive guy. Yet, he was an excellent finisher, converting the ones into twos, and the twos into threes, running them hard, making everyone wonder where he managed to get so much energy and stamina from. The key to his performance was what this terriffic energy management.

He knew that the effort involved in each run wasn’t the same. There were a few that were “obvious singles” or “obvious twos” and he correctly realized that there was no point in running them faster than was necessary. And he simply walked them, saving up his precious energy and stamina for the runs that required more energy. In fact, if you recollect, the defining picture of Ranatunga in the 1996 world cup was his nudging a ball to third man and lazily walking a single.

Similarly, in tennis, due to the unique game-set-match scoring system, not all points are of the same value. Some points are more equal than others. For example, it doesnt’ matter if you lose a game at love, or if you lose it after making 30. However, certain points (break points, especially) can make a tremendous difference to the game, and it is important that you win those.

Tennis, especially of the non-grass court variety, is a highly energy-consuming game. We saw on Friday the Nadal-Verdasco game being played for almost five hours. The final also promises to go on for a similar length of time. Even on grass, as we saw in the last Wimbledon, tennis can become an endurance game. To remind you, Rafa Nadal beat Roger Federer in the final back then, taking the fifth set 9-7 (Wimbledon has no tie-breakers in the last set). It was his superior energy-management and stamina-management that saw him through that day.

It had been a long time since I had seen Rafa play, and looking at him play today, it is clear that he has understood the Ranatunga principle well. In fact, he seems to be an excellent exponent of the same. A while back, Federer was leading 40-0, and Rafa just gave up and allowed Federer to take the game, choosing to preserve his energies for more important point. I’m not saying that Rafa has been completely giving up. What I’m saying is that he seems to be doing some kind of a “value analysis” for each point, and then deciding how much energy he is willing to spend on it.

I don’t know if he is a math stud, but you don’t need to be one in order to do simple Ranatunga analysis. You can get a computer to work out the relative values of points for you depending upon the match score, and broadly remember that when you are playing. And once you have done that a few times, you will automatically be able to figure out how much effort to put into each point (remember that you don’t need to know complicated projectile physics in order to catch a ball).

A lot of managers, especially fighters, don’t like the Ranatunga principle. Their management philosophy is that you always need to be f resh, and be prepared, and if you don’t dive on a regular basis, you won’t be able to dive when you actually need to. However, the Ranatunga reply to this is that as long as you know how to dive, and have general practice in diving, you will instinctively dive when you need to, and you should make sure that you have enough energy to dive.

Extending the analogy to work, there are some managers who like to push their subordinates to meet deadlines even when it isn’t important in the larger scheme of things. Their argument here is that their subordinates should have enough experience in diving so that they can use it when they need it. The Ranatunga response to that is for the subordinate to be smart, and to see the larger picture, and to call the manager’s bluff about the criticality of the project whenever it turns out to be not critical.

Ok, so Rafa has won the third set and leads the match 2 sets to 1. If this ends up being a pure endurance 5-setter, I would put my money on Rafa. He seems to be showing superior implementation of the Ranatunga principle.

IPL Structuring

I remember that this time, last year, I was eagerly looking forward to the IPL auctions. It also happened to be a time when I was actively looking out for a new job (i wasn’t going to find one till about six months later). And I was secretly hoping that one of the IPL franchises would employ me as a game theory and structuring consultant in order to help them out with the player auctions. While I tracked it online, I imagined myself sitting in the bidding room at the Trident, showing my excel sheet to the franchise owner and captain, and watch Preity Zinta enhance her Mata Amrita Index.

It was also a period of extreme NED, due to which i didn’t bother looking out actively to try consult for an IPL franchise. It was a period of low confidence, so I assumed I wasn’t good enough for this kind of work, and didnt’ bother doing anything in this direction. Frankly, I didn’t have a clue how to proceed, else i might have put SOME effort at least. A few months later, when the IPL was well underway, I figured out that one of my cousins is a big shot with Bangalore Royal Challengers, and he was among the people at the Trident who picked the Test XI to represent BRC. I wanted to kick myself, but for some reason I didn’t.

Currently, I’m comfortably employed, and so far have been happy with this job. Else I might have wanted to throw my hat into the ring. Once again, IPL team formation season is on. A few transfers have gone through already, and a few are currently in limbo. Bidding will happen next season for people who are joining the league this year. It promises to be an interesting time. And so far I’ve been deeply unhappy with the way the franchises are going about their business.

I’m especially upset with BRC, and have half a mind to call up my cousin who consults for them and give him a piece of my mind. How the hell could they let go of Zaheer Khan in exchage for Robin Uthappa? Yes, the latter is from Bangalore, and has that local pull factor. He has batted quite well this Ranji, though not anywhere close to what he played like 2 seasons back when he topped the batting charts. But he is supposed to be paid twice of what Zaheer was being paid! Is he really worth that much? I’m sure that BRC missed a trick here. I’m sure that had the BRC asked for a fee from Mumbai Indians in order to release Zaheer in exchange for Uthappa, the Indians would’ve definitely paid up. When Chelski can reportedly offer Anelka, Malouda, Alex and 15 million pounds in exchange for Robinho, Mumbai could definitely part with Uthappa and maybe a million dollars in exchange for Zaheer.

There were rumours of the Mumbai Indians negotiating a swap with Kings XI Punjab for a swap between Powar and Harbhajan, which reportedly got stalled because Harbhajan earns so much more than Powar. Once again, what if the Mumbai Indians paid a fee along with Harbhajan for Powar? I know it is ridiculous that Powar is worth Harbhajan plus a fee, but given their disparity in income, this is the only way that this deal is possible. And I’m sure that there is a particular fee, which if paid along with Harbhajan in exchange for Powar, will leave all the interested parties (Punjab, Mumbai, Harbhajan, Powar) better off. It seems like people are too lazy to find it.

The opportunities like this are endless. All that the franchises need is someone who has sufficient knowledge of game theory, coase theorem, a decent knowledge of cricket (interest in domestic cricket is a desirable quality) and who understands how to structure deals. I don’t know if franchises have already recruited such people but if they haven’t, they should try and recruit. The most obvious choice of person that I can think of who possesses all the above skills (including interest in domestic cricket) is me. Unlike last year, I’m not in the job market right now, but don’t mind doing some part-time stuff. I may not get paid, but I’m willing to work for a few IPL tickets and maybe invites to some parties with cricketers.

I’m also wondering if cricketers’ pay will go down starting the 2011 season onwards. The IPL auctions happened just before the downturn was to begin, and I’m sure that franchises have overpaid for most players. Since players have all signed three year contracts, their pay till the 2010 season is safe. Beyond that, I’m not sure if franchises will offer them fresh contracts at higher or equal salaries.

It would also be interesting to see if some version of the Bosman ruling is to operate in the IPL. We can only wait and see.