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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