IPL player bids make for dream teams

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Mumbai, Feb 20: Picture this: Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar and Australia’s Ricky Ponting will play under the captaincy of India’s Sourav Ganguly in the DLF Indian Premier League (IPL), for team Kolkata.

Seventy-eight players from across the globe went up for grabs on Wednesday at the IPL player auction held here. This list, however, did not include the five ‘iconic’ players—Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh—who are already assigned to their respective home teams and will be paid 15% more than the highest-paid member of their team. The eight teams are Delhi (owned by GMR), Mumbai (RIL), Chennai (India Cements), Bangalore (UB Group), Mohali (Preity Zinta-Ness Wadia), Jaipur (Emerging Media), Hyderabad (Deccan Chronicle) and Kolkata (Shah Rukh Khan).

Each franchisee can spend a maximum of $5 million to buy all its players. The contracts are for three years and the bid amounts are per player, per year. Each team will have a separate coach.

Lalit Modi, chairman, IPL, said, “People are using different strategies to build their squads. Some consider talent and quality, others look at factors like glamour and endorsements. Some bids have gone surprisingly low and some are surprisingly high. MS Dhoni and Andrew Symonds are the two players who went on every table.”

SRK’s Kolkata could prove the biggest crowd puller. Besides Ganguly as captain, SRK acquired Shoaib Akhtar (for $425,000), Ricky Ponting ($400,000), Brendan McCullum ($700,000), Chris Gayle ($800,000), Ajit Agarkar ($330,000), David Hussey ($625,000), Murali Karthik ($425,000) and rising star bowler Ishant Sharma ($950,000).

With that line-up, analysts say SRK could make a killing from a home match. When Kolkata plays at Eden Gardens (capacity: 1.2 lakh) and with an average ticket priced at Rs 500, SRK stands to mop up around Rs 6 crore.

Also, with SRK endorsing brands like Pepsi, Hyundai, Nokia, Airtel, Compaq and many others, these brands are expected to sponsor the Kolkata team in various capacities.

Ashish Bhasin, executive vice-president, IMAG Lowe Worldwide, said, "The Rs 1,000-crore sports marketing sector will further grow this year thanks to the IPL auction. There will be an incremental increase in ad revenues in 2008. My guess is that there will be an increase of Rs 400 crore from IPL."