IPL auction: Pakistani players ignored

Sarsaparilla · January 20, 2010, 7:03pm

Conspiracy of silence - Kamran Abbasi

Not a single Pakistan cricketer has attracted a bid in the IPL auction. Can this be genuine? Lalit Modi doesn’t see anything strange in it, others haven’t attracted bids either he says. But which other country with Pakistan’s track record in Twenty20 cricket has been blanked?
Let’s examine the facts. The current crop of Pakistan players were among the winners of the 2009 World Twenty20 and finalists in the previous one. Lahore Badshahs won the ICL. Pakistan cricketers featured prominently and influentially in the inaugral IPL tournament, and they are some of the best Twenty20 players in the world. Shahid Afridi, at the very least, is a star attraction.
The facts, Mr Modi, don’t fit with your explanation. Why were Pakistan players put through the charade of entering the auction when they were to be boycotted by the franchises? Undoubtedly, politics are in play and Pakistan’s cricketers are pawns in the South Asian game of battle chess.
Once more, Pakistan cricket is being marginalised with the PCB and the ICC watching impotently. The wall of silence that has greeted Pakistan’s players in the IPL auction isn’t a misfortune. It reeks of conspiracy.
Follow me on Twitter during the tour of Australia: http://twitter.com/KamranAbbasi

I am sorry to say the franchises have taken a decision not based on cricketing sense but on political grounds which is a shame and has hurt the image of cricket

I say screw IPL

Besides we have more important issues to worry about

ICC T20 WC 2010 - Pakistan victory w’d be the biggest slap on the faces of Lalit, Franchises and Indian Government
World Cup 2011 &
Test Cricket

Hey, it is their money and their business. You can complain all you want, but they can spend their money where they want and not spend it where they do not want. It is simple. Their customer does not want to see Pakistani players so they will not pay for Pakisyani players. It is business, pure and simple.

IPL can live very well without Pakistani players, however talented they might be.