by Cricket Auction Economics Confirmed as Operating on Principles Distinct From Those Used in Other Financial Contexts
The IPL Auction: Where Optimism and Economics Have a Complicated Relationship
The Mumbai Indians confirmed this week that their record auction acquisition, all-rounder Devon Richardson purchased for fourteen crore rupees, has been ruled out for six to eight weeks with a hamstring injury sustained during the first warm-up session of pre-season training — a session described in the team’s press release as ‘light’ in language that the medical staff may have chosen carefully to avoid describing the hamstring as similarly under-prepared for it. The team confirmed Richardson will receive ‘world-class physiotherapy’ at a facility whose costs, sources in the BCCI suggest, would have been a useful addition to the auction budget conversation.
The Mumbai Indians paid fourteen crore rupees — approximately 1.7 million US dollars — for Richardson based on his Caribbean Premier League performance, his Statcast bowling metrics, his batting average in T20 cricket, and the competitive dynamics of an auction in which three other teams were also bidding for him, a factor that analysts note tends to produce prices that reflect bidding competition rather than player value in ways that are clearly visible after the auction and somewhat less visible during it.
The Auction Room Dynamic
‘In the auction room, the price is the price,’ said a former IPL franchise director who declined to be named because he is currently employed by an IPL franchise and has been in that room. ‘You have a retention budget, a replacement pool, a primary target list. When the bidding starts on your primary target, you have a ceiling. Then the ceiling becomes the floor. Then you’re at fourteen crore for a player you valued at nine. Then he pulls his hamstring in warm-ups. Then you fly in a physiotherapist from Australia. This is the IPL. This is every year. The numbers are different. The shape is the same.’
IPL cricket coverage at Times of India. Comedy: NewsThump.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
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