From The Times:
A golden tiger’s head from the throne of Tipu Sultan – an Indian king famed for resisting British rule – is to go on auction in London next week, less than a month after a sale of Mahatma Gandhi’s belongings sparked an outcry in India.
The gem-encrusted figure due to go on sale at Bonhams on April 2 is considered one of the most important relics of Tipu Sultan, who ruled the southern kingdom of Mysore from 1782-1799 and is renowned as India’s first freedom fighter.
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And click here to go to Bonhams:
In The Christian Science Monitor, Danna Harman reports from Rangoon:
It’s the last hour of the last day of the gems auction in Rangoon, and tired buyers are fanning themselves with worn auction catalogs, and making their final bids.
Over the past five days, jade, rubies, sapphires, and close to $150 million have passed hands here, according to the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd., the consortium that dominates Burma’s gemstone trade and is owned by the defense ministry and a clutch of military officers.
Who’s buying? China, India, Singapore, and Thailand are scooping up Burma’s stones. US first lady Laura Bush’s efforts at a global boycott of Burma’s gems seem to have done little to reduce China’s appetite for Burmese jade to make trinkets and souvenirs to sell at the Summer Olympics.
[ Photo: A Burmese worker washes jade prior to an auction]
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Amelia Gentleman in International Herald Tribune on why the world’s antique dealers love the avant-garde city of Chandigarh in India:
Every working day for the past 20 years, Suresh Kanwar, a civil engineer in Chandigarh’s forestry department, has been sitting on the same battered wooden chair, an object which he said had “no beauty,” even if it was, “for office use, very comfortable.”
Hazarding a guess as to its value, he suggested 400 rupees, or $10, “perhaps, at a junkyard.” A pair of identical chairs, instantly recognizable to collectors as Pierre Jeanneret teak “V-chairs,” will go on sale at the auction house Christie’s in New York this month with a reserve of $8,000 to $12,000.(Photo: Discarded teak chairs designed by Pierre Jeanneret)
A handful of antique dealers from around the world have become regular visitors to government junkyards in Chandigarh, the experimental modernist city 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, north of New Delhi, conceived by the architect Le Corbusier in the 1950s. They buy up disused stocks of furniture that was specially created by Corbusier’s colleagues to fit out the new city.
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The Indian Premier League is, perhaps, the final step in cricket’s journey to becoming a 21st century business enterprise. Rajdeep Sardesai in Hindustan Times:
My father was obviously born in the wrong generation. For his first Test for the country in 1961, he got a cheque of Rs 150. When he was part of the historic 1971 win in West Indies and England, he got the princely sum of Rs 750 per match. Contrast that with a Robin Uthappa, who without a single international century, is already a crorepati many times over. Or an Ishant Sharma, who after his first international tour, is already lining up mega-contracts. My own favourite story of cricket from another generation is related by the legendary Bishen Singh Bedi. In 1956, India defeated New Zealand in four days in a Test match. The team, paid Rs 50 per day at the time, did not receive an allowance for the fifth day. When one of the players dared to ask a cricket official for an additional Rs 50, he was curtly told, “Who asked you to win the match in four days?”
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Tango with cash
Is all this for real, asks Pradeep Magazine in Hindustan Times:
Or was one watching owners of fat cheque-books sitting in a casino and massaging their egos by throwing mindboggling sums at star cricketers? Shahrukh Khan, the owner of the Kolkata team, found the whole bidding process so thrilling that he said he was getting ‘addicted’ to it. IS Bindra, a BCCI official, and a former Indian Administrative Service officer, had never seen a day like this in his life “ever”. Has cricket in India entered the age of sponsored gambling where its stake-holders are abdicating their responsibility and letting the ‘free-market’ forces take control of the sport?
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Jamie Pandaram in The Sydney Morning Herald:
Andrew Symonds offered one major reason why he didn’t want to tour Pakistan yesterday afternoon, and hours later Indian Premier League franchise Hyderabad gave him over a million more, making the all-rounder Australia’s highest-paid Twenty20 player.
Symonds was at the centre of the recent racism row and his relationship with India said to be in tatters but money spoke louder than words at the IPL auction in Mumbai overnight as he was purchased for $1.47 million per year, second only to India’s one-day captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who collected $1.65m to play for Chennai.
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Seventy nine cricketers to eight franchises in the Indian Premier League go under the hammer today. The Times has the story:
The last time Richard Madley was in the newspapers for a cricket auction, he was handling the sale of a collection of ties and saucy seaside postcards once owned by Brian Johnston. Today’s auction is rather less frivolous. When Madley, a lifelong Glamorgan supporter, starts work in the ballroom of the Oberoi Hilton in Bombay, $40million (about £20million) will be at stake.
Madley, an auctioneer with Dreweatts, the British firm, will handle today’s sale of 79 cricketers to the eight franchises in the Indian Premier League (IPL), the new Twenty20 competition that will start on April 18, and anticipation has become feverish.
“I’ve just been mobbed outside the hotel,” Madley said yesterday. “They say that cricket is a religion here, but it appears to be a bit more than that.”
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And for all the dope on IPL, Hindustan Times has a dummies guide:
What is the IPL ?
The Indian Premier League is a professional twenty20 cricket league created and promoted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and backed by the International Cricket Council.
Franchises
The IPL works on a franchise-system based on the American style of hiring players and transfers. These franchises were put for auction, where the highest bidder won the rights to own the team, representing each city. The auction took place on January 24, 2008 and the total base price for the auction was $400 million. The auction went on to fetch $723.59 million.
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