Indian Premier League: behind the scenes
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
Salaries of administrators
2017: mentors, coaches
Indranil Basu, `Icon' Sachin makes more than `coach' Dravid, May 20, 2017: The Times of India
Salary Of IPL Coaches Has Seen Handsome Growth Over 10 Years
Ten seasons of the IPL have ensured that chief mentors or coaches of various teams are laughing all the way to the bank.When the IPL started in 2008, the average salary of a coach was around Rs 40 lakh, which has seen exponential growth in 10 years.
Former Indian captain and mentor of the Delhi Daredevils team Rahul Dravid has probably the highest-paid coaching job in the IPL, making, as per estimates, Rs 4.5 crore per year.
Sources said that former Mumbai Indians coach and ex-Australia captain Ricky Ponting too got roughly the same amount two years ago when he was Mumbai coach. Sources added that Daniel Vettori (Royal Challengers Bangalore) and Jacques Kallis (Kolkata Knight Riders) are making somewhere around Rs 3.5 crore per year. Virender Sehwag (Kings XI Punjab), Mahela Jayawardene (Mumbai Indians), Tom Moody (Sunrisers Hyderabad) and Stephen Fleming (Pune Rising Supergiant) are said to be in the Rs 2.3 to Rs 3-crore category .
“Fleming is paid around Rs 2.5 crore while Mahela and Moody too fall in the same bracket. Viru could be paid a little more because he was paid around Rs 3 crore during his playing days,“ a source said while adding that former stalwart Sachin Tendulkar, who is the `icon' for Mumbai Indians, gets a hefty paycheque, which could be higher than Dravid's salary , for donning the role.
However, Tendulkar is only present with the Mumbai team when they are playing at home and doesn't travel with the team.
It was learnt that Gujarat Lions' coach Brad Hodge was the lowest-paid coach in IPL-10, making around Rs 70 lakh. “No coach in IPL has broken the milliondollar barrier, but it could just be a matter of time,“ a source explained. Even the assistant coaches in the IPL teams are paid handsomely -up to Rs 1.4 crore a year.
Source said India national coach Anil Kumble could become one of the highest-paid coaches in the world if BCCI agrees to his demand for a wage increase. “If Kumble gets his wish, his salary would reach the Rs 8-crore bracket,“ another source said.
Coaches at the domestic level aren't paid so handsomely . A Ranji Trophy coach generally gets an annual contract of between Rs 20 to Rs 30 lakh. At the National Cricket Academy, a coach -if he is a former India player -gets Rs 8,000 per day while others make Rs 4,500 per day when they attend camps in Bengaluru.
Scouting for talent
2010-19
Partha Bhaduri, May 4, 2019: The Times of India
What does it take to spot your favourite IPL star? The untold story of risks and rewards involved in the hunt for that one cricketer among millions blessed with the ability to be a big-stage gamechanger
New Delhi:
“Talent instantly recognizes genius,” Arthur Conan Doyle memorably wrote. But Doyle, originally a physician, typically failed to mention who would do the job of recognizing talent in the first place.
We can only guess if the good doctor Doyle, who played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club, would have given his nod to an intelligence setup to spot cricketing ability in the Indian Premier League franchises.
In the lead-up to an auction, data crunchers in IPL boardrooms sift through piles of facts and figures around new players who are spotted by experts — veteran spies with well-worn microscopes who scour the dusty playing fields in search of the X-factor. This is the cloak and dagger world of T20 talent scouts, a highly competitive profession populated by experienced coaches. They are, in essence, the type of people who tend to repeatedly get lucky when asked to spot a needle in a haystack.
Pravin Amre would know. Amre, a very happy man this season following the success of the revamped Delhi Capitals, has been the team’s chief talent scout for six years. “I have a network across associations.
An IPL squad is local-talent driven, if you look at the percentage of local players vis-a-vis foreigners picked,” says Amre, a former Mumbai coach and ex-chairman of the junior selection committee. Having been associated with both Mumbai Indians and the now-defunct Pune Warriors, Amre can offer a glimpse of the big picture. A word he often relies on is ‘trust’.
“The owners’ trust is important. Then comes the trust of players. IPL is all about data analytics. It can be daunting for a young player to have his weaknesses exposed on a laptop. Trust builds confidence, and that translates into performance.”
But the IPL is a world of instant gratification, and trust sometimes is fleeting. Back in 2010, Amre, then India ‘A’ coach, saw a young West Indies player pulverizing India’s spinners in a game in England.
Impressed, he alerted former India fast bowler TA Sekhar, who was then a talent scout for Delhi Daredevils. The player was Andre Russell, and Daredevils finally managed to latch on to him at the 2012 auction for Rs 2.26 crore. But Russell, though a solid performer, wasn’t given enough time to blossom at the franchise. Not the megastar he is today, Russell was gone from Delhi to KKR by 2014. Today he commands a price tag of Rs 8.5 crore. Russell is just one among a huge array of stars Delhi let go, Amre says. “Some moves didn’t go our way.”
Most of these decisions are punts which one must get right immediately. This puts pressure on franchises to go for shock value and quirky skills, mystery spinners and unorthodox players. Each club, however, adopts its own unique technique, falling back on its traditions and conventions. So while Kolkata Knight Riders will focus primarily on white-ball, T20 cricket for scouting purposes, Mumbai Indians rely on the local academies and clubs. And while Delhi had a mid-season camp in Mumbai, Chennai Super Kings don’t believe in such auditions.
“We have a radical approach,” says CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan. “We don’t have star cricketers doing the hunting. We don’t call for camps. We rely on the local grapevine, those who have their ear to the ground. We also depend on local leagues (like the TNPL). For foreign cricketers, we rely on Stephen (Fleming, chief coach) and Michael Hussey.”
And why should a franchise work at all on a young player before the auction? Viswanathan is vocal about this big dilemma facing talent scouts: how do you ensure the young and extravagantly talented cricketer you just spotted is going to come to you at the auction? “There is risk involved in grooming talent, because you don’t know if you will be able to buy the cricketer eventually,” he says.
Delhi would know. They spotted Krunal Pandya and chased him for two years, but were outbid by Mumbai Indians after the player’s base price shot up from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 2 crore at the 2016 auction. Delhi instead bought Pawan Negi for an inexplicable Rs 8.5 crore, and promptly released him the next season.
It’s not just the auctions where luck can play a part. As the story goes, KKR were the first to call Hardik Pandya for a training camp. The player was injured and didn’t turn up.
This is where “projection skills” of the scout play a key role. Which player is the real deal? Sometimes the grapevine delivers wonders (see graphic), but for every Ravindra Jadeja or David Warner, there are those who fall by the wayside, the Saurabh Tiwarys, Paul Valthatys and Kamran Khans of the IPL world, making the case for a more institutionalized talent pool.
Former India captain and selector Dilip Vengsarkar, founding head of the Indian cricket board’s nowdefunct Talent Resource Development Wing, gave Indian cricket the likes of MS Dhoni and Irfan Pathan. “These talents were then groomed by the National Cricket Academy, which has now sadly become a hospital,” says Vengsarkar, half in jest.
“Raina, Dinesh Karthik, Ambati Rayudu all came through this system. The IPL has brought talent scouting back in focus but franchises cannot take responsibility for Indian cricket. It cannot be done with T20 team dynamics and an auction in mind,” Vengsarkar says.
Still, there is one quality which can herald success across formats, and it’s not technique. “Great players are born, not made,” says Amre. “You can only fine-tune them. Temperament is everything, because the IPL is a highpressure world, just like international cricket. This is where most fail to make the cut.”
Statistics, year-wise
2020
BCCI told to pay DC Rs 4,800cr
K ShriniwasRao, BCCI told to pay DC Rs 4,800cr, July 18, 2020: The Times of India
Almost eight years after the BCCI entered an arbitration with Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd (DCHL) to settle the dispute over the termination of Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Deccan Chargers, an award has been passed on the matter.
Bombay High Court-appointed sole arbitrator CK Thakkar held the termination illegal on Friday and asked the BCCI to pay DCHL Rs 4800 crore by September end.
BCCI had terminated Deccan Chargers’ contract on September 15, 2012 and a week later, both parties had agreed to go for arbitration. Top sources in BCCI told TOI that they’ve not seen the order yet so can’t comment right now. However, BCCI can be expected to challenge the award, say those tracking developments.
Major drama had ensued in the run-up to this court battle back in 2012, when BCCI threatened action against the Chargers over “non-payment of dues to the cricketers representing the franchise and for mortgaging the franchise to a consortium of lenders without keeping BCCI informed”, say those representing BCCI’s view on this matter. The consortium of eight lenders comprising ICICI Bank Ltd, Yes Bank Ltd, Axis Bank Ltd, IDBI Bank Ltd, Ratnakar Bank, SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd and Religare Finvest Ltd, had filed an affidavit in the court agreeing to fund the debtladen franchise. DCHL had bought Deccan Chargers for US$107m (@Rs 40 per dollar back then) through an auction conducted by BCCI in 2008.
Those familiar with developments say BCCI had first offered to “help” DCHL sell the franchise by bringing a new owner on board and in line with it floated an advertisement, calling for potential buyers. It was then that Hyderabadbased PVP Ventures had bid Rs 900 crore for the team. “That bid was rejected because DCHL held the terms of payment unacceptable,” say those in the know.
Following the failed bid, BCCI terminated the franchise and floated a fresh tender and the Hyderabad franchise was resold to Sun TV Network.
