The professionalization (some say privatization) of cricket has yielded some unexpected benefits. Firstly, folks are being held responsible for bad performance. That is such a good thing to see in Indian cricket, which is used to just passing around the buck. The well publicized firing of the CEO of the Bangalore Royal Challengers - Charu Sharma - is only the start. Another curious thing I noticed yesterday was that VVS Laxman was curiously out, “with a wrist injury”, and Gilchrist, who’s in the top 5 run scorers, taking over the captaincy. Boucher, who’s had a so-so tournament, was also “resting” in the last Bangalore Royal Challengers game. Players actually being held responsible for their (and their teams’) dismal performance? Who would have thought?
Jokes apart, this strategy is such a good idea. It creates the right incentives for players - shape up or ship out. The teams lowest in the league tables are probably having the most number of “performance review meetings” with their bosses. And as everyone in the software industry knows very well, the performance review meetings never go very well. The result has been that the team at the bottom of the table always coming back to win the next game. It happened with Bangalore, then Mumbai and then with Hyderabad again.
"The teams lowest in the league tables
are probably having the most number of
'performance review meetings' with their bosses"
That’s what makes the matches so interesting. I’ll bet the league tables are going to look real close near the end, and folks are going to start worrying about NRR soon. There will be causalities on the way (Bajji, Charu Sharma, VVS Laxman so far), but there will also be heroes. Rohit Sharma is the top scorer in the tournament so far! How would’ve thought!?! No team can afford to relax in this tournament. The hectic schedule along with the intense pressure will almost guarantee a close torment for us!
