COLOSSUS OF IPL

The dust is settling over the controversy surrounding the issue of IPL auction and the non - selection of any Pakistan player by any franchisee. There are murmurs that Pakistan players might still get a chance in IPL 3. But I am already looking ahead... at the auction to be held for IPL 4.

Lalit Modi has promised the biggest auction as of yet for IPL 4. I am certain we will see many more cases of punctured reputations. The facts that we know are: 10 teams, 12 foreigners cap per team, 6 players (4 Indians and 2 foreigners) can be retained from the original team, and there are some more but I am not interested in those for the purpose of this blog.

Lets work out some numbers here. 10 teams and 12 foreigners per team means that 120 foreigners will figure in IPL 4. Out of these, 16 foreigners can be retained by the 8 original teams. This means that 104 foreigners will be on sale. Last I checked on each team's websites, they had an average on 16 Indian players in every squad. That makes it about 160 Indian players for IPL 4 out of which 32 will be retained in their original 8 teams. So, we can expect an auction of about 125-130 Indian players. Put in the amount of money involved, the best performers of IPL Season 3 and World T20 Championship 2010 can laugh their way to their banks.

IPL, since its inception, has been a centre of many controversies - relating to cricket and everything else under the sun. Almost all of these controversies have has a link to one man - no brownie points for guessing who - Lalit Modi. I have no clue what the man is like in real life. A person who can manage such a huge event almost single-handedly must be one heck of a person with a heck of a Blackberry. But I am here to speak, as a member of general public, about the public perception of this man.

Lalit Modi, more often than not, comes across as an arrogant man who has an air of superiority. Most people I know are almost embarassed when he makes his tall claims and tries to show that IPL is the best. And they hate him when he proves himself right. And they envy him when he whispers something to Preity Zinta or Shilpa Shetty. His lisp does not impress many either.

Indians have always liked their stars to be humble and down-to-earth characters (I don't have to look far ahead for examples - Sachin Tendulkar!). We find such men as the ideal role models for the youth. We don't mind a splash of brashness (remember Sourav Ganguly?), but we cannot tolerate self-obsession. And this is one of the biggest reasons why Lalit Modi generates a lot of hatred in the common man.

I do not know where the IPL is headed to in future. Soothsayers have made their predictions. Who amongst them will be the Nostradamus? Your guess is as good as mine. But one thing is for sure, there might be some respect but also a huge sigh of relief when the man who projects himself as Colossus steps down (or is made to step down... even better) from the helm.