Was IPL Auction Fixed?

The Mumbai franchisee has done what all other IPL teams always wanted to do but remained silent perhaps fearing the backlash of the BCCI President-elect who is an epic example of ‘conflict of interest’. It was always premised that being secretary of BCCI, member of IPL Governing council (now even President-elect of BCCI, yes we are talking about N Sreenivasan) and being a major shareholder in the Company owning the Chennai franchisee there lies a case of ‘conflict of interest’. Lalit Modi, when in trouble, also questioned this double role of N Sreenivasan. There has always been reports in the media about other franchisee owners being uncomfortable with Sreenivasan’s actions.

Now the Mumbai Indians have opened their mouth and it may start a new scene in the already murkier IPL picture. Mumbai Indians have sought an explanation from the IPL regarding a last-minute change in the auction procedure, which they feel compromised the “level-playing field” for all franchises. Nikhil Meswani, executive director of Reliance Industries, in a letter to the Governing Council asked why was the auction changed from ‘selection of sets at random’ to pre-decided ‘order of auction list’ for the January 8-9 players auction, and said there was no ‘justification’ in making the last-minute change.

ESPNCricinfo claims to have access to the copy of the letter. According to it, the letter referredto the clause in the ‘Player Auction Briefing’ dated December 17, 2010, which stated that the auction of player sets would occur in random order. But on the eve of the auction (held on January 8 and 9), two hours before the final auction briefing, the franchises were sent an email containing an amendment which stated that the random order would be replaced by pre-decided ‘order of the auction list’.

Meshwani said,

The primary purpose of deciding the order of the auction (whether of subsequent sets or the players within the sets) through random draw in the auction room in presence of the bidders is to ensure transparency and a level playing field to all the franchisees so that all the franchisees are not only privy to the process but are treated in the same manner and no particular team receives preferred treatment.

These are serious charges pointing to a definite direction. IPL rules can only be changed if strong reasons are available for such changes. In this case, it is not clear why IPL governing council went on to change the rules so hastily and just a few hours before the start of the auction. By making charges of ‘compromising level playing field for all franchises’, Mumbai definitely means that one or some franchisees were helped by this last moment change.

If the deals on IPL auction are deeply analysed, the change certainly helped the team CSK. It must not be just a coincidence that Mr Sreenivasan is part of the company owning the team CSK. Even before the IPL auctions, he had insisted on having the player retention clause which the CSK used quite effectively later as they retained 4 of their previous players under this clause. n the auctions too, their strategy was to retain maximum of the old team and they managed to do that with buying 7 of their previous players in the auctions. Did CSK manage to do it using the change MI has mentioned in the letter? To some extent yes. The way auction list was such arranged (as per previous clause, the list could never have been arranged if it would have been done randomly) that the previous CSK players appeared on the auction floor later in the day by the time many of the teams had spent a big amount of their purse at the start of the day. No team could go for an aggressive bidding for the players CSK targeted as they were already down with their purse. Perhaps, it also explains why CSK remained a bit silent at the start of the auction.

It looks N Sreenivasan has really tweaked the laws to favor his team using his position in the BCCI and the Governing council. The BCCI secretary will have to do an explaining job otherwise the IPL’s image will take a beating among the fans.

UPDATE: Read the next part: How CSK was helped in the ‘fixed’ IPL Auction