The Forbes magazine has named Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the top earning cricketer in the world last year. Forbes said that Dhoni earns $8 million in endorsements, from the brands like Reebok, General Electric and Pepsi, and the rest from his cricket salary and fees.
With its deep-pocketed owners and global appeal, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has shaken up professional cricket, luring top players from five continents with paychecks as big as $111,000 per three-hour match. That’s a stunning sum in a sport where domestic leagues have traditionally been an afterthought to the international version of the game.
While cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world (it’s played competitively in more than 100 countries), before the IPL launched last year, no domestic league was truly run as a business. But with IPL teams now paying top players as much as $1.55 million for just a five week season, versus $500,000 to $1 million, depending on the country, for an almost year-long slate of national team games, cricket is in the midst of a dramatic shift. More:
[Graphic: HT]
In Tehelka, Shantanu Guha Ray looks at the deteriorating relationship between Shah Rukh Khan and Sourav Ganguly and says this is the reason why Shah Rukh dropped the word Kolkata from his Knight Riders’ team.
A FORTNIGHT AGO, as he stepped onto the tarmac of Mumbai airport after his meeting with Shah Rukh Khan, Sourav Ganguly picked up his Blackberry and whispered “I do not trust anyone, really, I do not trust anyone!” The former Indian skipper, on a high barely a month before because of his involvement in the selection of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) team and the cheer leaders, had a premonition of what would happen once the team landed in Cape Town for the trial matches before the start of the second edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). A week before the crucial meeting at Mannat, home of KKR owner and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, Ganguly had skirmished with coach John Buchanan over the latter’s multiple captaincy theory and had set Kolkata afire by first disagreeing with, and then agreeing to the format.
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Sports historian Boria Majumdar takes stock of Sourav Ganguly’s innings in The Times of India
How will one best remember Sourav Ganguly? What will be his most enduring legacy? These are questions being asked all over the cricketing world on a day when Ganguly will wear his India colours for one final time in Nagpur. While some say that he will be best remembered for his never-say-die spirit and perhaps as India’s best ever captain, history will also surely remember him as someone who rescued Indian cricket from its deepest low: the tribulations of match fixing.At a time when the match fixing scandal was eating into the very edifice of Indian cricket and the national side under Sachin Tendulkar was in disarray, Ganguly assumed the mantle of leadership. Fans had started to lose interest in the game and only a handful in the cricket fraternity – one of them being Ganguly – was above suspicion. To compound problems, he was soon challenged by Steve Waugh’s record-breaking Australians seeking to conquer the “final frontier”. It was a team that came to India on the back of 15 wins on the trot.
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Sourav Ganguly is dropped from the Rest of India team announced for the Irani Trophy. Indian batting legends can’t go on forever. But how they go is what matters, says The Indian Express
Sourav Ganguly was not in the line-up announced for the Irani Trophy, the traditional start to the domestic first-class and Test season. Endless analysis followed, in the manner in which it does in this cricket-crazy country, of whether it meant that Ganguly had been dropped from the Test team as well; whether, if so, it was fair; and whether, if dropped, Ganguly is capable of making another remarkable comeback. Other star players have been dropped, Yuvraj Singh among them, but their fate is not being obsessively discussed — not just because none of them has yet made the lasting contribution to the sport that Ganguly has, but that nobody fears that their international career is one missed Test away from being a memory.
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For a timeline on Ganguly’s career by NDTV click here.
In The Telegraph, Lokendra Pratap Sahi interviews former Team India cricket captain Sourav Ganguly in Colombo on Ajantha Mendis, India’s chances in the Test series and his own plans for retirement
Q You were the MoM in the last Test we played (versus South Africa, in Kanpur)… That must be a source of strength in the lead-up to the newest series…
A Yes, but not just that Test against South Africa… I draw strength from my performances in Test cricket since my comeback at the Wanderers in December 2006 (1,571 runs at an average of 50-plus). Hopefully, I can carry on in the same manner.
Q Having been away from international cricket for some months (not getting to play a role in the tri-series in Bangladesh and the Asia Cup in Pakistan), it’s a comeback of sorts for you in the Team India environment. Does it take time to adjust?
It’s not a comeback of sorts… I don’t see it that way… But, yes, I’ve not been a part of the one-day team this year… That’s the reality.
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Cheerleaders, slapgate and, now, a showdown between Shane Warne and Sourav Ganguly. Will the controversties at IPL never cease? CricInfo has both sides of the story.
First, Warne is upset at Ganguly’s refusal to walk
The Indian Premier League feels increasingly like the Shane Warne Show. Tonight, after his Rajasthan Royals side made it four wins in a row in front of a partisan crowd at the Sawai Mansingh stadium in Jaipur, Warne launched into a stinging attack on Sourav Ganguly, the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders, for what he perceived to be a blatant disregard for the spirit of the game. He seemed to have a point, but right now Warne could probably tell you the earth was flat and you’d believe him.
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Then, Ganguly says, ‘I just want to laugh at what Warne is saying’.
Sourav Ganguly, captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders, has dismissed Shane Warne’s criticism of his on-field behaviour, even questioning his moral right to comment about the spirit of the game. Warne, leading the Rajasthan Royals, first slammed Ganguly for taking too long to come out to bat and then condemned his attitude towards the IPL’s Spirit of Cricket agreement when he questioned a catch taken by Graeme Smith.
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The selectors have put their faith in youth and must now see that vision through, regardless of immediate results writes Sambit Bal in Cricinfo
How inconsiderate of the Indian selectors to deflect the attention from a glorious Test win to the triviality of choosing a team for that utter irrelevance known as the CB Series. But the wheel must move on, and the selectors have decided to move on too. There is no place for Sourav Ganguly in the side, no recall for Rahul Dravid and not even a thought for VVS Laxman. Sachin Tendulkar remains the only link with the past but then, after all, he is Sachin Tendulkar. And he has been India’s best batsman in one-day cricket in the last year.
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