The Galacticos

By the end of the evening though,Rohit Sharma would prove to him that it wasn’t.

Tiwary at least faced 10 balls and hit three fours in his limited time in the middle during IPL IV’s opening game,Rohit — with his grilled visor pressed against the apex of the willow handle — only managed to stare into the distance,probably into his past. Rohit’s vision screened right through Sachin Tendulkar and Ambati Rayudu,who donned the roles of thunder and lightning during the hot pursuit of Bangalore’s total,a target the on-field pair reached comfortably without Rohit’s services. In fact,by the end of his first four matches for his new side,Rohit would be needed just twice — at times when the juice of the chase had already been sucked out dry.

Things of course had been quite different in the relatively smaller franchise of the Deccan Chargers — a place where he had scored 1170 runs in three seasons. A match was always never won without Rohit’s ballad with a cricket bat at the Hyderabad based club. Things,though,had changed,and how.

The compulsory mix-and-match-at-the-end-of-every-three-seasons rule had found its first big name victims. There were others sacrificed in the reshuffling process too — those who had come to the forefront by using IPL as the ultimate platform for glory. The circus was now playing both creator and destroyer.

The likes of Rohit and Tiwary had featured heavily on the ‘must have’ section of wishlists carried by team owners at January’s IPL bazaar,and both names fetched big money moves to franchises that were building their own reputations as cricket’s galácticos during the auction. The only problem was that under the astronomical weight of the galaxy of stars — aka the new team mates — their respective IPL worlds of old crumbled. And the transaction came at the cost of their defined roles,ones they were so used to at their previous clubs.

Millions and more

In a system where business tycoons and Bollywood starlets with deep pockets run the show,the birth of Real Madrid equivalents in IPL’s franchise structure was inevitable. While there may have been caps on expenditure to prevent just that from happening,in a tournament that was the brainchild of person who is currently on the run,under the table money was never ever going to be much of a problem. But the concept of irreplacables just cannot work the same way in cricket as it does in the universal game. In football,11 galácticos get to take the field together; in cricket only two of them take the crease at any given time. And in an IPL match,every star must share space within 20 overs of non-distributive time.

So while Mumbai and Chennai spent several millions in retaining their full quota of four players (many didn’t have the spending power to do so),the owners decided to throw in a few million more to also buy the who’s who of the smaller clubs,accentuating their attempt at creating the closest equivalent of a T20 Dream Team. Hence T Suman — who like Rohit shined gloriously at Hyderabad and played every single match of the 2009 and 2010 seasons to become the highest run-getter by an uncapped Indian player — is yet to feature in a single starting XI for the Mumbai based franchise.

The paradox doesn’t end there. While Suman,Rohit and Tiwary managed to rake in the big moolah at the auction solely due to their consistency in smaller clubs,the lack of match time has ensured that consistency will not be a key feature by the time they go under the hammer the next time around.

At the owner’s mercy

So what do the prolific performers choose between a) Score big and constantly attract the attention of the national selectors by getting plenty of opportunities with the likes of Deccan and without a fat pay cheque,or,b) Get paid heavily and rot away due to the lack of match time in a team like Mumbai or Bangalore. The answer is c) You don’t get to choose. While (say) Cristiano Ronaldo picked and chose to be a galáctico in Real Madrid,in the IPL,the galáctico is picked and chosen without choice. Like Rohit.

“At Deccan,I was assured to have a bat. Mumbai is a big club with in-form players,so I will just have to wait for my opportunities. And when the moment comes,I will have to latch onto it with both hands,” Rohit says. And latch onto it he did. After tugging at the leash to walk in and make an impact as the No.4 batsman for three successive matches,Rohit finally got his opportunity in the fourth after Tendulkar and Rayudu were dismissed. With plenty of overs to spare,his survival instincts ensured that he forged his highest IPL score of 87 against Chennai Super Kings. The others,however,haven’t been so lucky.

After playing five matches at No.6,Tiwary is still waiting to score his first big knock of the season,tallying just 63 runs so far. “I am hoping to play a similar role as I did in Mumbai,” Tiwary had said before the season. “Hopefully,I will continue to bat at No.3 for Bangalore and continue from where I had left off.” But that wasn’t the case,for after playing just three international games for Team India,Tiwary’s income at the auction increased quite dramatically,at the cost of choice of franchise — which flew out of the window.

However,not everyone with choices makes the right one. Uncapped player Abhishek Jhunjhunwala,who notched 183 runs for Rajasthan last season,had the power of choice. But he signed with newbies Pune Warriors and hasn’t played a game this season. Whether the likes of Jhunjhunwala will get as many chances as they did in smaller clubs remains to be seen,the IPL has already given rise to a fresh crop of small club glory achievers.

Change of fortunes the Valthaty way

While Jhunjhunwala moved west in search of greater glory,his former Royals team mate Paul Valthaty moved north to the very struggling Kings XI Punjab,and grabbed his mosaic of opportunities with both hands,to say the very least. Valthaty scored an unbeaten 120,followed it up with a 75,before scoring 46 in the third successive game to snatch the Orange Cap from Tendulkar’s crown. And in the process,the 27-year old lad from Mumbai,who has never played a First-Class match in domestic cricket,has become IPL’s latest poster boy.

“This team management showed faith in me. Maybe if Royals showed the same faith in me I could have scored similarly for them too,who knows,” says the man of the moment,Valthaty. With a deep batting line-up at Royals,Valthaty’s chances were slim,but with hardly any big names in Punjab,the opportunities have come thick and fast.

“Moving is not always a bad thing,” says left-arm pacer Wagh,who got to play just one match for Rajasthan. Now,he has already played every game for the Warriors in the abscence of Nehra,and has also scalped a 3/16 amongst his four wickets this season.

Wagh’s Pune team-mate and one of the best T20 bowlers in the world Murali Kartik,explains the IPL predicament. “Opportunities is of paramount importance. International players like us don’t have a say in where we want to play,and that is demanding. Having built a bond with your franchise for three years,most players would like to be retained,or picked up,by their old team. If not,one can only pray that the opportunities are as good in your next franchise. Otherwise,it is quite easy to go missing when the chances dry up,” warns Kartik.

And Kartik is right. While the concept of owning a team of galácticos is a temptation that few owners avoid,the powerful ones have proven often enough that building a side and nurturing talent is not their primary concern. Rohit and Tiwary may have the requisite cricketing talent to bounce back from the early IPL-created setbacks,many others who aren’t in the same ilk or league as them surely don’t.

(Inputs from Bharat Sundaresan & Devendra Pandey)

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