A humiliating non-auction

With the politicians from both countries getting involved in the IPL auction controversy, the editorials of most Indian newspapers are also holding forth on the issue. The Hindu wonders why Pakistan players weren't excluded from the auction shortlist if there were concerns over their security clearances or visas.

The Indian Express calls for the Indian government to bring the IPL's organisers to account for the damage caused to relations between the two countries.

IPL is a work in progress, and cricket officials are clearly using it to test the limits to which they can consolidate their turf as a state within a state. Last year they invoked the calendar as a pretext for conceit. Now they are wrecking a civility that’s survived even through the darkest days of Indo-Pak relations. Whatever be the state of play in relations between the two governments, cricket has been a sphere to assert a normative standard of people-to-people interaction. In fact, governments have drunk deep from this carefully harvested reservoir of goodwill. Modi and his cohorts, by their arrogant disregard for the consequences for their actions, have depleted that reservoir.

The Times of India says both the Indian government and the IPL's organisers come out poorly from the episode.

In the Hindustan Times, Ayaz Memon writes that it is improbable that the three major stakeholders - the Indian government, the IPL and the franchise owners - were driven by plain business considerations.

The Kolkata-based Telegraph also says the hamhandedness involved in allowing Pakistan players on the shortlist and then not picking them has done immense disservice to the game, and to the cause of peace.

And in the Pakistani daily Dawn, Saad Shafqat calls the exclusion of Pakistan players "patently cruel" and urges the PCB to launch a franchise-based Twenty20 league in Pakistan.

On her blog Free Hit in India Today, Sharda Ugra says the IPL should just have been upfront about the reasons behind the exclusion of the Pakistan players, instead of hiding behind less-than-satisfactory excuses like a lack of slots or availability issues.