‘Kohli for ₹42 crore, Bumrah 35 crore’: Ex-India star says Starc, Cummins’ collective 45 cr. deal ‘makes no sense’
Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins’ big IPL payday during Tuesday’s mini-auction continues to surprise. The Australian pace bowling duo raked in a combined money of ₹45.25 crore as Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders splurged on Cummins and Starc respectively as if there’s no tomorrow. Two-time winners KKR haven’t won an IPL title in nine years, and the only time SRH won its only championship was seven years ago in 2016. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as both SRH and KKR raised the stakes on the two costliest buys in the history of IPL and its auctions.
What amount will Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah fetch in today’s auction?(Getty)
But outside of the madness that ensued inside the Coca-Cola area in Dubai, beyond the euphoria and the adrenaline rush experienced by KKR, SRH and their owners, question must be asked: Do Starc and Cummins really deserve such a gobsmacking amount? Sure enough, they are two of the most fearsome pacers in the world, but do their T20 records warrant a blind bidding war such as the one that unfolded yesterday. Former India batter Aakash Chopra doesn’t think so.
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More importantly, Chopra reckons Starc and Cummins’ price tags are pure absurdity given where other modern-day greats stand in comparison. Entering an auction now as compared to let’s say 6 or 10 years back is as contrasting as day and night, and Chopra reckons that if the Australian pair can fetch over 45 crore, the likes of Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah – if they are to enter the IPL auction – will shatter all records at once.
Also Read: ‘Kohli, Bumrah must be watching this and thinking ‘what’s going on?’
“If Mitchell Starc plays all 14 games and bowls his full quota of four overs, each ball will cost ₹7,60,000. Astonishing. But here’s a question. Who is the world’s best bowler? Who is the IPL’s best bowler? His name is Jasprit Bumrah. He gets ₹12 crore and Starc almost 25. That’s wrong. I don’t grudge anybody’s money. I wish everyone gets paid a lot but how is this fair?” the ex-India opener said in a video on his YouTube channel.
“It’s the Indian Premier League. How is one getting paid so less and the other so much? Loyalty is royalty. If tomorrow, Bumrah tells MI ‘Please release me and I’ll put my name in the auction’. Or if Kohli says the same to RCB, their prices will rise, right? And that’s how it should be? If this auction market decides that Starc’s price is ₹25 crore, then it will also decide that Kohli should be worth 42 crore, or Bumrah 35 crore. If that isn’t happening, there is a fault.”
Set a cap on foreigners, suggests Chopra
Cummins on Tuesday became the first-ever player to breach the ₹20-crore mark when he surpassed Sam Curran’s bid of ₹18.5 crore last year. However, Cummins’ record of becoming the costliest IPL player of all time barely lasted an hour as Starc pipped him by ₹1.25 crore. As a matter of fact, eight of the top 10 most expensive players are from overseas, with Yuvraj Singh and Ishan Kishan being the only two Indians in the last.
Chopra reckons that a void as big as this will make players self-doubt themselves and suggests that the only way to solve ‘disparity’ is to put a cap on the spending capacity on foreign player.
“One solution to this is to put a cap on the money kept for overseas players. For example – if you have a purse of ₹200 crore to assemble a team, out of which 1.5 or 1.75 is for Indian players, and the remaining for foreigners. When this happens, it will give you parity, which right now doesn’t exist. You can sense disparity at the moment, which is not a good thing. Pretty sure SRH looked at Cummins as a captaincy option. If not, ₹20.50 crore makes no sense. Not for somebody who doesn’t have the greatest IPL record. Class player but his T20 numbers are 50-50,” he added.
