The Smiling Assasin's Smirk

Cricket is a religion in India. Cricketers are worshiped in India. For a good performance some cricketers earn lot of monetary as well as non-monetary prizes. At the same time for a bad performance the same cricketers recieve lot of brickbats. If one point of time they are cheered and revered, one bad performance and they are ripped apart . Then most players are accused of performing more on Screen than Pitch. Many players recieve lot of money for endrossing brands.

India is also accused by experts of playing too much cricket that takes a heavy toll on performance of players.I differ to disagree with these experts on amount of cricket being played. Firstly, cricket is a professional sports. And cricketers are professionals. Like a corporate job, cricket too is a fulltime job. If these players have signed contract with BCCI, then they are liable to perform their job to the fullest. Why would playing 50 ODIs and 25 Tests take a toll? If they are not playing international cricket then at any point of time a cricketer plays domestic cricket or club cricket. I assume that a professional cricketer plays minimum 6 hours of cricket daily. So if not international cricket then some domestic cricket. Then why would his cricket would take a toll? If the argument is effort to be put is more in international cricket than domestic cricket then ethically something is wrong. As a professional no matter where one is playing one has to put in 100%. So he cant put in 50% in domestic cricket under the pretext of preserving his body.As a executive in a Co, can anyone say that he/she will perform only during month of Feb and march and rest of the year he will take rest? Day in day out he has to put in the same level of passion and efforts in his work. So why not cricketers??

There is some argument in allowing these players to appear in ads etc. Because they have a short life as active cricketers. After that they depend on these incomes to survive. But if they are treated purely as professional something similar to MBAs then that would take care of these issues. They could also earn gratuity and pension benefits.

Now whether these cricketers should be paid based on their performance or not? Yes.Simply because they are professionals. And a professional has to own his performance and be answerable. He should be awarded for achieveing his targets. And for every nn-performance his pay should be cut. I guess BCCI should pay these players based on:

1. Merit
2. Group incentives
3. Performance incentives

BCCI has already implemented this concept. But i guess they need to take it to the next level. For example, if the team loses let the earnings from the BCCI sponsors etc be withheld(Team sponsors). Only the appearance fees be paid to them. let these players be judged not only from individual performance but contribution towards team's win. If a player scores century and team loses then thats not performance.Some formula could be arrived at to take this into account.
Its time we see cricket as a professional sport and take cricketers as mere professionals. Something similar to WWE stars. I think WWE is the most prfessional sports authority in the world. They have contracts with the players and these players never whine that they are playing too much. I guess BCCI should take some learnings from Vince McMohan!!

Annual salaries:

Grade A (Rs 50 lakh retainers): Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Anil Kumble, V V S Laxman, Sourav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh and Irfan Pathan.
Grade B (Rs 35 lakh): Yuvraj Singh, Mohd Kaif, Ajit Agarkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Grade C (Rs 20 lakh): Murali Karthik, Gautam Gambhir, Zaheer Khan, Suresh Raina and S Sreesanth.

Match fees(Contracted Players):
Tests: Rs 2.50 lakh (Playing 11)
ODIs: Rs 1.60 lakh.
The reserves would get 50 per cent of the fees.
Match fees(Non-Contracted Players):
Tests: Rs 3.20 lakh (for playing 11)Reserves: Rs 1.60 lakh
ODIs: Rs 2.20 lakh (for playing 11)Reserves: Rs 1.10 lakh.

Source: Rediff

http://www.indiatodaygroup.com/itoday/20000807/cricket2.html

The cricketers continue to get match fees and product endorsements apart from their annual salaries.These amounts are not small considering the fact that India plays over 30 ODIs and over 10 Test matches in a year.
In India, cricketers are earning money which was unheard of even a decade ago. Top Test players make more money off the ground by endorsements and other business than they do by playing for the country. Even Ranji Trophy players are better off financially than their counterparts in other sports. Cricket is no more a gentleman’s game; now it is business.Top Indian players are sitting on a goldmine. Leading the pack is little master Sachin Tendulkar, who stands to pick up, according to reports, up to Rs 5 crore annually for every deal he signs. Sourav Ganguly, who is reportedly paid Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 core for each endorsement. Rahul Dravid gets a little less. Even Parthiv Patel, the baby of the team who is yet to establish his place (he was dropped from the team for the tri-nation tournament in Holland, the NatWest Challenge and the ICC Champions Trophy) commands an endorsement fee of about Rs 20 lakh.

Popularity of a cricketer in India depends on how he plays in a match individually,not how many matches he has won for the country. Case in point is Anil Kumble, compared with Sachin Tendulkar. Cricket fans in India are very sentimental or i would say emotional.They expect Sachin to score century in every match. They want sehwag to hit every ball out of the ground.But i dont think public ever laud any match-winning player as much as the exciting plyers. So i guess it is wrong to associate performance based pay with popularity. There could be a faint connection here.For Sachins, Dravids of India it could be a parameter but not for new players. So a standard performance based pay applicable to all the players errespective of their popularity is desirable.

P.S.: This article was first published in Pagalguy.com by me.

# posted by Biswa Prakash Nayak @ 11:09 PM 1 comments