I don't necessarily agree with the valuations, but you've got to keep in mind that McGrath was 37 and Sharma was 19. Building a long term team relationship with Sharma would probably have been more valuable than taking a punt on a guy who might not perform to the best levels in the third year of his contract. Look at the Mumbai Indians, they've signed on Pollock, and he's already looking at leaving them in the lurch after a year.
TBF, Pollock signed a 1 year contract with MIs.
Hah
exactly, he shouldn't have time for criticsm of any game but his own.
What were they thinking?
MI had a piss poor bidding strategy.
They needed to provide the icon players some incentive for staying at their home grounds, I guess. IMO Sehwag and Yuvraj, at the least, would ironically have made a lot more if they were on the free market like Dhoni was.
Haha, it's an insult to cricket to compare the two, 37 or not.
Ding ding! That's the point. It's not based on skill, it's based on marketability. I was responding to the fact that you need to be a great international player. That's not true - you just need to be marketable. Appear in a couple of Hindi movies, sing a bollywood song and you'll fetch more than if you improve your cricket. At least right now.
AWTA. And being in the news certainly helps. Andrew Symonds is an excellent case in point. It was moronish of DCs to price him so humoungoulsy and shows how short-term their views were.
Think someone like Shane Watson was a terrific buy, oh and Shaun Marsh.
Watson yes. Marsh was completely out of the blue signing, and his impact could not have been foreseen by anyone but a prophet.
There's mismatches, then there's Bangla-style mismatches. Even though the overwhelming attitude to Tests in India may be indifference, I'd imagine the attitude to Ind-vs-NZ would be indifference and Ind-vs-Ban complete and total disinterest.
Symonds is probably the best T20 player around though, so it's fair enough that he was second-highest. His bowling was very poor but he played some incredible innings, and there's no better fielder. The only problem was his availability. He played two or three games at the start then went to a pre-WI-tour training camp with Australia. Their major balls-up was not having a replacement.
Maybe Symonds is a good batsman. But his bowling was next to disaster in the IPL. I understand the logic of trying to get Symmo, but there is no doubt his price skyrocketed due to the Harby episode, increasing his "repute" and thereby "marketability".
That might well be true of sports like football and basketball, but shouldn't apply to test cricket. Having "test status" should mean a team is at least a worthy adversary for the other test nations. As there are only nine teams (currently) with it, "test status" is elitist almost by definition, which should mean that such gross mismatches are mimimalised.
He's saying Tom Moody knew Marsh was a gun. I'm on record here as saying the same when he played his first game for Aus A years ago. Took a while to come to fruition but, well, I'm still claiming it, all of you shut up.
But is it actually hurting Test cricket interest? I am not convinced. People already complain about too much cricket. Most people simply don't tune in, but there is plenty of other cricket to see.
In fairness, though, hasn't Test cricket always been relatively poorly attended in India, aside from in 2001 perhaps?
