IPL Begins Next Round of Stock Trade, Minus Salary Cap

His smiling days may be over. Rahul Dravid may have scored the maximum of the runs scored by the Royal Challengers Bangalore, but if the IPL’s proposal to lift the transfer ban and cap goes through, Vijay Mallya may have other ideas.

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The IPL’s next season is scheduled to get underway from April 10th next year. But there could well be some large scale shuffles in team members as well as their share of the pie. The IPL proposes to lift the five million dollar salary cap paving the way for the likes of Vijay Mallya to make changes left, right and centre to the team in a bid to regain respect after the debacle that was the first season. The man who fired Charu Sharma with the team barely settling into the first season and almost sent the coach Venkatesh Prasad sacking will not hold back even if it means parting with more moolah.

The players’ transfer window has been set between 15th December, 2008 and 15th January, 2009 with a tentative date of 29th January being set for player auctions. Teams such as Kolkata Knight Riders have already begun their scouting in earnest and there will be a few sweeping changes in light of the topsy turvy performance last year. Few teams will choose the option of going in unchanged into the next season if the cap is raised. But this amendment will only be effected if the IPL franchisees themselves agree to it when the IPL convenes a meeting of franchisees in Goa between October 16th and 18th next month.

There are still concerns and especially from those marginalizes such as Bangladesh who is facing a mass exodus to the ‘rebel’ Twenty league, the ICL, given the limited opportunities not only within the country but also, within the IPL capsule. While the IPL is not responsible for maintaining the balance across cricket playing nations, a task for the ICC, it could well create a scenario where the only way to keep nations like Bangladesh from wilting further from this kind of defections would be to recognize the ICL.

The venues for the semi finals and finals will also be decided with the winners Rajasthan Royals choosing the venue for next year's finals and the runners up Chennai Super Kings deciding on the semi finals venues.

The other clear and present danger with lifting the salary cap is not only the unfathomable amounts that the players will now earn for doing their club service, significantly higher than keeping up national duty but also, that there could be lop sided teams in the competition and thereby, making for more uneven contests and therefore, a few dull games, a scenario that was seldom seen during the first edition, well, apart from some matches involving Mallya’s Royal Challengers Bangalore and Hyderabad’s Deccan Chargers.

Shahid Afridi was pulled up for his statements that V.V.S. Laxman was far from inspirational a captain and that Adam Gilchrist was better suited for the role. But with the transfer window open, Afridi himself could come under some fire. He has failed to value his own wicket too often even in the context of a Twenty20 game and it will be interesting to see if the struggling team’s franchisees decide to swap the mercurial star for a more predictable one.

The games begin again and much like last year, predominantly off the field first.