In pic: Saurav Ganguly
KOLKATA: If it was darkness at noon for Sourav Ganguly and his fans on Saturday, it turned out to be a 'Black Sunday' for them as they waited endlessly, hoping against hope that one of the 10 franchises would pick up the former India captain on the rebound at the IPL auction in Bangalore.
It was not to be. And as the two-day jamboree ended at 6pm sharp, the writing on the wall was clear: Sourav would not be playing in IPL. There was complete disbelief when his name was announced by the auctioneer on Saturday and there was no response from the franchise owners.
On Sunday, disbelief gave way to indignation as none of the franchises pencilled him out to be re-auctioned even though 28 players from the unsold list were given a second chance.
UP captain Mohammad , one of Sourav's proteges, in fact, was given a third chance and finally found a buyer in Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Sourav's teammate in Kolkata Knight Riders, Murali Kartik, who too had gone unsold the first time around, hit pay dirt when he was re-presented at the auction with Pune Warriors buying him for $400,000 — exactly double his base price.
It was almost as if the 10 franchises had come to the auction with a mindset that the likes of Sourav, Chris Gayle, Mark Boucher and Brian Lara were not to be touched.
The franchises' reluctance to buy West Indies and English players was understandable because of the uncertainty over their availability for the entire duration of IPL-4, that starts on April 8 and concludes on May 20.
However, it was baffling why teams like Pune, Kochi and Deccan Chargers — who had plenty of money in their kitty — refused to go for Sourav even though they didn't have enough Indian batsmen on their rosters.
It was a humiliation of sorts for a man who the BCCI had anointed as an icon player when the IPL was conceived. For the record, of the 48 capped Indian players who went on auction, only three, including Sourav, remained unsold.
The other two — Wasim Jaffer and VRV Singh — could not find a buyer even though, unlike Sourav, they were put up for re-auction.
The KKR management, having splurged on the opening day of the auction, operated on a low key on Sunday. They spent half-a-million dollars on Laxmipathy Balaji and a quarter-a-million on Jaydev Unadkat to bolster their pace attack even as Bengal boy Ashok Dinda was snatched away by Delhi Daredevils.
KKR also made a couple of low-key purchases in Dutch all-rounder Ryan ten Doeschate and under-20 Australian fast bowler James Pattinson, but still failed to address the balance of the side. Having bought seven foreign players and only five Indians, they now have no option but to recruit heavily from CAB first division club Kalighat, which has served as a supply chain for them over the past three IPL seasons.
There is talk of Sourav taking up a mentoring role with one of the IPL sides, but the man himself remained tight-lipped about his future plans. -TOI
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