IPL - (I)nsanely (P)rofitable (L)eague for cricketers (... washed up cricketers too)

After a long hiatus, I am back to blogging and this post is somewhat related to my previous post . I also found it an interesting coincidence that my long hiatus came after my 13th post. anyway i will cut to the main point.

I am amazed at the amount of money being offered to players in IPL. Cricket is not a huge game when compared to Soccer in some extent to even NBA or NFL or MLB. Soccer is undoubtedly the richest game in the world. I think the professionals in soccer are the highest paid sportspersons. Peyton Manning one of the top quarter backs in the NFL signed a 7 year deal for 98 million dollars. Lebron james one of the top players on the NBA signed a deal for 60 million US dollars. The numbers in the baseball come out to be around 130 million dollars for 7 years for top players. At the outset these numbers come out to be huge when compared to cricket but its not true. This is because all these players in the other leagues are expected to have year long commitments to their respective franchise with the regular season and the championships and the offseason training regime and so on. Compared to this, IPL requires a 8 week commitment window only or maybe a little more. No way would a rooki player like ishant sharma would command the contract he got in IPL. I can again cite the example of NBA where players are assigned to a rookie minimum contract for 3 years i believe and prove that they can play at the highest level and be at top fitness for 3 years and then they can get the highest paid contract. This gives some insurance for the management so that if the player flames out after promise, ther can move on.The other important thing is the money being offered is only to the top players and only at the peak of their careers. I do agree that there are some overpaid players too in NBA and other leagues too. My point is once a player is past his prime, his contract will be waived and he will not be resigned. The money offered by IPl is huge for the retirees like damien martyn, glen mcgrath and others. This money is like lottery on vacation for players like cairns, harris and others.

Who do these retirees and other indian players have to thank? Not the franchisee sponsors; not the monopolistic BCCI; Mr subash chandra, for without him there would be no ICL without which there would have been no IPL at all.