IPL: Indian "Paisa" League!

India Shining scores in Cricket as well. Not just that our Indian cricket team is doing well in all its new look, form, format and Jazz. Or so to say Sreesanth's Boogie as he calls it. There is lots happening, cricketers making up with actresses, actresses making up with cricketers and same actress making up with both Captain and Vice Captain of One-Day team!

Pardon me for all those "!" I use. Thats my tool to create Jazz! ;-). So the auctions for the prestigious IPL happened with all the anticipated hype and grandeur. Auctioneer got called from UK. Cricketers and team owners walked into the venue in Merc SLK's. Whether it was SRK, Preity Zinta, Saurav "Dada" Ganguly all were decked up for occasions. Firstly the IPL will cross a USD 1 Billion in revenues, BCCI will make cool money. And our bureaucrats who "Run" the sports Company BCCI which also is supposed to be one of India's top 200 company must have made cool buck.

But the biggest beneficiary are the top players and the younger Indian lot. News papers/sites/channels went something like this : "Dhoni Sold for 6 cr", "Ishan Bought for 4.75 Cr", "Rohit Sharma priced at....." Take this back by 4-5 years, when Indian Stock Markets were languishing at 4000-5000 levels for Sensex, and the Indian team had players like Srinath, Robin Singh etc. The team was on old shoulders, and here I would like to add a comment made by Wasim Akram while commentating recently "Few years back the Indian youngsters had a tough job at hand: If you are in then Score in the first few matches" and now with the new look, you have such a deep batting line up of inexperienced throwing themselves ably onto some of the best bowlers in the World. Also add to it the bowlers Ishant Sharma, Irfan Pathan, RP Singh shooting their bests onto some of the best players in the world. It seems there is no way they can be under pressure as their captain himself is 25.

Mr. Bindra said "First time our players have been priced by the free market, it is the free market which is paying what they are paying" So this means Ishant becomes a multiple crorepati at age of 19, Rohit and Robin Utthapa who are doing well but still a few games old will mint cool crores through IPL. What does it do to Indian teams performance in the mainline competitions is yet to be seen. In contrast in Football where leagues exist the mainline matches where a player represents in country are few, but in Cricket they are in excess.

FMCG Companies, Infrastructure companies, Cement Companies, Production Houses and Oil companies have all bought teams for themselves in IPL and have paid huge sums of money to both Indians and Overseas players. So is this the new business stream for them? How do these companies profit the most, I think only by selling players to rivals they will make the real buck for the investments. GMR says it will become a profitable venture for them in 3 years.

As they say in stock market parlance "The underlying fundamentals of Indian economy are robust" come what may IPL should succeed the trading of players will succeed too. Hopefully Indian economy and the Indian team will keep shining as well!

"Its All About Money, Honey!"

Disclaimer: Sorry India Infoline for may be have used the tagline of yours, but it aptly suits my blog and I am not using this blog to generate monetary profits for myself.