Icons proved a handicap, complain IPL franchisees

DELHI, February 21: They were supposed to be the jewels in the crown. But if the proceedings at Wednesday's mega auction in IPL are anything to go by, the five "icon" players may have become millstones around the necks of their franchisees. According to sources, all the franchisees of the teams that had been allocated an icon player - Mumbai (Sachin Tendulkar), Bangalore (Rahul Dravid), Kolkata (Sourav Ganguly), Delhi (Virender Sehwag) and Mohali (Yuvraj Singh) - protested during the auction that they had been handicapped in the bidding process. They pointed out, the stipulation that the icons have to be paid at least 15% more than any other team player unduly raised their costs in the bidding. In comparison, they argued, teams with no icons could afford to bid high for specific players, while they could not do so, since it would effectively mean paying even more for the icon player, leaving them with little for the rest of the squad. For instance, if Chennai had an icon player and had still chosen to buy Dhoni for Rs 6 crore, it would have had to spend 15% more, that is Rs 6.9 crore, on the icon player. Out of a maximum budget of $5 million, or about Rs 20 crore, it would've ended up paying Rs 12.9 crore on just two players - that's almost two-thirds of the total available money. Not surprisingly, the two highest bids - for Dhoni and Andrew Symonds from Hyderabad - came from teams that don't have an icon. The franchisees expressed the view that IPL should have allotted an icon to each team to level the field. Alternatively, they suggested, the icons could have been kept out of the $5 million cap imposed on franchisees for buying players. A third option was that the non-icon teams like Jaipur and Hyderabad should've paid their captain 15% more than the most expensive player. IPL officials at the bidding - Lalit Modi, I S Bindra and Rajeev Shukla - said the rules were known to all franchisees and it was too late in the day to change the goalposts