Srinagar: Former India cricketer turned expert Aakash Chopra has made huge claim that likes of Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah would break all records if they feature in IPL Auctions.
He said that if likes of Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins fetch more than ₹20 crore, imagine what be craze for Kohli and others.
“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.”
“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.