IPL player prices
For those that don’t know, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a new Twenty20 tournament where eight city ‘franchises’ compete for little prestige, but huge fiscal reward.
There were several players who were classed as ‘iconic’ and had to stay with their home teams, but everyone else was up for grabs in an auction. The city franchises bid what they were willing to pay each player per year.
For some reason, despite taking place in the land of the rupee in a conspicuously non-American sport, this whole bidding thing was done in US dollars.
How we wish everyone would gather together and say to us: “This is precisely what the world thinks of you - in dollars.” To put an actual monetary figure on a person’s worth is a cruel, cruel thing to do, no matter how handsomely said people are rewarded.
So without further ado, let’s all wade in and make it crueller.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni - $1.5 million
Everyone bid for Dhoni. He’s swoonsome. Dhoni went to Chennai.
Andrew Symonds - $1.35 million
Symonds is usually frightened of the subcontinent, finding any old excuse not to visit. He’ll counter by saying that that’s just Pakistan, which is just as well when there are seven-figure sums at stake. Hyderabad wanted Symonds *this much*.
Ishant Sharma - $950,000
Long memories from the bidders here. Kolkata finally ended up with a player who’s been playing international cricket for about a fortnight.
Manoj Tiwary - $675,000
No clue. It’s 300-and-odd thousand per international run he’s scored though. Delhi were the frugal chaps who invested in him.
Shane Warne - $450,000
Shane, unfortunately the world thinks that you’re $50,000 worse than Cameron White. That’s assuming Jaipur haven’t vastly overpaid for you.
Ricky Ponting - $400,000
Another duff bid. Everyone point and laugh. Ricky Ponting went for less than Mark Boucher. In fact, Ponting is Kolkata’s seventh most valuable player. Score.
Matthew Hayden - $375,000
Everyone point and laugh again, only this time really put your backs into it. Chennai wanted Matthew Hayden, but only about half as much as they wanted Jacob Oram, Albie Morkel and Suresh Raina, all of whom clocked in at $600,000 plus.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul - $200,000
Bangalore would have been better off getting three-and-a-half more Shivs instead of their one Jacques Kallis, but still. At least they got one.
About these values
We’ve read a few articles about how this auction will have bruised a few egos. Doubtless it will, but it’s not so straightforward as just looking at the price and that’s what the player’s worth.
It’s a different format of the game for one thing (admittedly now the most financially rewarding format). Certain sorts of players are of greater worth than others. Quick-scoring entertainers are who the franchises want. Bowlers are also less desirable as they can only contribute for four overs wheras batsmen have potentially the entire innings to influence the match.
There are also certain rules that have boosted particular players’ values. Each side must feature four Indian players as well as four players under the age of 22. Get yourself a 19-year-old like Ishant Sharma and you’re fulfilling your quotas. Glenn McGrath however ($350,000), will take up one of your four overseas spots and you’ll get four overs, no batting and negligible fielding out of him.
We’re a bit uncertain about what happens at the end of the season. Players can be traded, but contracts have been guaranteed by the BCCI for three years. Maybe it’s worth getting younger players into your side early on before they’re worth more. That might be another reason why some of the more established names have gone for less than you might expect.
Stop the press!
We’ve had a computer that hated the internet FOR ALL IT WAS WORTH for the last two days, so we’re a bit behind. We’re going to try and catch up, so brace yourselves for some three sentence updates that completely miss the point of what’s been going on.
At the age of 28. Uninjured. We’ve been here before, haven’t we?
It would be tempting to look on this as 
An excellent all-round performance from Paul Collingwood: 3-43 with the ball and 70 not out off 50 balls. If it were Andrew Flintoff with those figures, everyone’d be giggling, dribbling and getting all rambunctious. They’d be saying ‘bring on the Aussies’ like morons due to the lack of blood supply to their brains.
We really ought to have something to say about Stephen Fleming, but we really don’t.
Cricinfo’s Statsguru can produce all sorts of valuable reports for you. However, there’s one that it can’t produce, which would be just about priceless to us. It can’t list every single person who’s played international cricket in order of weight, with