Vijay Mallya is right, and wrong!

‘’At the end of the day, people need to understand that the IPL has a corporate side to it, and a very definite corporate side. It is not at all cricket in the traditional sense.’’

Vijay Mallya is right here. It is not traditional cricket with reasonable money for cricketers. Mind-boggling salaries and exorbitant prices have been paid to purchase sides and franchises are probably right in demanding positive results. It is like old India-Pak rivalries where captains invariably got a sack after a poor result. Only that it is corporate pride, rather than the nation’s prestige, which is at stake.

Then Mallya is also one of those one billion Indians, who are much smarter than the selectors in terms of picking their dream eleven. At times, he can be smarter than the likes of Charu, Dravid, Sachin, and Harsha in picking his men (after all, Mumbai Indians are also not faring too well despite three in a row while no-hoper Jaipur are on top).

The real problem with this format is that even the best can fail in picking a successful eleven. Else the likes of Marsh and Watson would not have been getting peanuts compared to some of the biggest names who failed to deliver. Probably Mohali and Jaipur would still have been struggling to be among the top four, and not sitting so comfortably, had these two not delivered. Compare that to the likes of Symonds (who would have been expected to win all the matches for his team) and Ponting (who failed so miserably). Even Ishant Sharma, the find of the season and good for all formats, has not been the kind of influence his team would have liked him to be.

So here Mallya goes horribly wrong in blaming Dravid and Charu. Probably, the problem was in strategy. The team needed stabilisers in the middle and attacking batsman at the top of the order as in yesterday’s game. The way they approached their match against Mohali, in a very aggressive mood before that unfortunate and bizarre dismissal of Misbah ul Haq , showed what all was possible.

Then the team also went by reputation. It is not very easy to have the likes of Kallis, Jaffer and Kumble warming the bench. But then difficult decisions have to be taken to ensure a judicious mix of attacking and defensive play. Invariably, there are situations in the middle of the innings when teams need to consolidate. You can’t always be attacking, even in twenty20!

But the biggest mistake Mallya has committed is by publicly airing his disapproval of the way team was selected and shaped up. That seems to have further demoralized an already bruised side. He may be right in what all he said, but the timing was certainly not the right one. With his rapid-fire statements, he has turned sympathy into indignation. No wonder that a headline in Mail Today aptly described the sorry spectacle as ‘’Cry Baby Tycoon blames others for his IPL Team’s losses’’. The flamboyant Tycoon does need to learn a few things from Mukesh Ambani, who must have talked to his team privately after a string of initial losses.