Why Great Cricketers may not make Great Administrators

A lot has been said about team owners in the IPL meddling in their team’s cricketing strategies. The argument used is these owners don’t know what it’s like to play top-level cricket and hence stick to the business side of things. The argument does hold a lot of weight. After all, getting your employees to fulfill their sales or collection targets is a lot different from getting your batsmen to average 40 at a strike rate of 150. Why then, do people think cricketers have what it takes to comment on what should happen with free agency? Sure they’re allowed to have their opinion as they have to play alongside and against their peers. But there are a lot of other factors at play.

Take the recent article on cricinfo in which Sachin Tendulkar talks about franchises being able to retain 4 Indian and 4 overseas players. Unfortunately, he hasn’t taken the time to get into how feasible this is.

Firstly, there will be two more franchises who will have to start from scratch next season. They are based in relatively smaller markets and have paid almost thrice as much as the team based in the biggest market. Hence, they are already at a disadvantage to start with. Taking away 4 overseas players from each of the 8 existing franchises may not be as devastating – there will still be 6 international level overseas players freed up. It might be a slight disadvantage but not nearly as big a handicap as that of not having access to 32 Indian players, and Tendulkar has made a distinction between Indian and domestic players. What this means is the two expansion franchises will be scraping the bottom of the cricketing barrel in the October auction, and even there they will be competing with the eight existing franchises.

Secondly, Tendulkar hasn’t gone into how the eight players should be retained. Intuitively, a player who knows his franchise wants to retain him knows he is sought after in the market. Why then would he choose to stay with his current team instead of testing the market? His current franchise anyway has the option of outbidding the competition and retaining his services. Even if a player decided not to put himself into the auction, how will it impact his salary? There is a salary cap of $7 million and it will be difficult for owners to retain 4 Indian Internationals and 4 overseas players without getting awfully close to the salary cap. This might lead to owners finding alternate means of compensating the players. For example, India Cements might offer Suresh Raina a contract of $350,000 and appoint him the Brand Ambassador for their cement company, for which they would pay him, say, $500,000. Ashok Malik has highlighted this problem on cricinfo. He has used the example of Whyte and Mackay appointing Kevin Pietersen their Brand Ambassador. Whyte and Mackay is a whisky brand owned by the UB Group which also owns Kevin Pietersen’s IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Lastly, some players may also be unhappy with their current employer and want to switch teams even if their current employer is offering them the highest salary. They may want to either test the market or simply sign up with another team if they’re able to negotiate a contract with that team. For example, what happens if Virat Kohli is able to successfully negotiate a contract with the Delhi Daredevils? It makes no sense to retain a player who doesn’t want to play for you. William Gallas once threatened to score own goals if Chelsea didn’t sell him to Arsenal. In such a situation, does the player then have the right to sign with the new team or is he obligated to go into the auction pool?

There are a lot of issues that need to be resolved with the coming auction and with the problems the league faces at the moment they may not be resolved for quite a while. It is well and good for Sachin Tendulkar to voice his opinion, but with all due respect to him, he should leave this to cricketers and administrators who can look at this issue objectively and from all angles.

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