Turned off by the IPL already
The Indian Premier League auctions felt “grubby” for the Age’s Greg Baum, who asks who will care about the tournament?
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
The Indian Premier League auctions felt “grubby” for the Age’s Greg Baum, who asks who will care about the tournament?
Sport is at its best when spectators feel that players share their cause. IPL cricketers will have time only to learn to love their pay clerks and their first-class seats on the first flight out. The usual tired arguments have been advanced about how sportsfolk have only a small window of opportunity and cannot be blamed for making the most of it. But it is not as if any of yesterday's stock was facing a life of destitution.
The trend of India's cricketers lapping up the lion's share of the money is sure to startle even those who have been tracking this business closely, and anger some Australian cricketers, writes Anand Vasu in the Hindustan Times.
It defied cricketing logic that Yusuf Pathan was sold for more than Ponting, that someone like Ishant Sharma, the flavour of the day but very much a greenhorn still, came in at close to a million dollars.
In the same paper, Atreyo Mukhopadhyay catches up with Manoj Tiwary in Australia who talks about his ambitions as an IPL recruit and what a startling figure like $6,75,000 means for a youngster who has witnessed financial strife.
Thoughts of buying a house for his parents who "struggled a lot to educate their three sons in an English medium school", were obviously there as was the plan to give shape to certain other dreams. Also, there was a promise to help others chase their dreams.
Michael Clarke put that into perspective this week when he said that he'd rather save himself for Australia and spend downtime taking his old man fishing. England's Alastair Cook said he was well enough remunerated for playing for England, and it was not as if he had grown up dreaming of playing for Mohali.
The Courier-Mail surveys five sporting figures on the impact of Twenty20.
Allan Border, who appears in Adelaide’s Advertiser, believes India currently has “too much to say in matters”.
Peter English is former Australasia editor of ESPNcricinfo