'Humiliating, archaic' IPL Auction faces NZCPA fury

Auckland: The last week’s Indian Premier League (IPL) 2018 Player Auction saw young and old stars fetch millions if not billions as the eight teams went into a bidding frenzy. The New Zealand Cricket Players Association (NZCPA) has lashed out at the IPL auction on Tuesday.

NZCPA chief executive Heath Mills did not mince any words as he came down heavily on the procedure to pick cricketers to play for IPL teams. He felt that the method to offer cricketers their livelihood is not “professional”.

"I think the whole system is archaic and deeply humiliating for the players, who are paraded like cattle for all the world to see," Mills was quoted as saying by New Zealand Herald.

"There's lot of good things about the Indian Premier League and it's been great for cricket but I'd like to see it mirror the rest of professional sport in the way they engage athletes. The auction system is wrong – it's not professional, far from it," Mills added.

In a two-day auction in Bengaluru, 169 cricketers were bought by eight sides and Rs 4,31,70,00,000 ($70 million) were spent.

Earlier on Tuesday, Peter Clinton, former Wellington Cricket chief executive, had expressed displeasure about the IPL player auction, terming it “undignified, cruel & unnecessary employment practice” in a tweet.

Mills echoed Clinton’s views, saying, "The players enter the auction not knowing where they're are going, who their team-mates are going be, who's managing them, who the owners are – no other sports league in the world engages players on that basis.”

"We've seen some players play for five or six teams over the 10 years the league has been going. Coaches cannot build an affinity with players, they can't build a long-term culture. The whole thing is very poor and players associations around the world would like to see it change," he added.

Mills conceded that IPL auction has been great for those who get fat paychecks and added that many cricketers are not happy with the way the entire procedure takes place. If anything, they are frustrated.

"Some players do exceptionally well out of if but the vast majority would like to see the system changed. They would like to negotiate with coaches and owners behind closed doors," said Mills before adding, "No-one in the cricket world that I've spoken to can understand how players are picked, how their price is determined ... you could spend years trying to work out how the Indian Premier League auction works and not fully understand it.”

Mills said that he spoke to a few players from the 24, who were a part of the auction and, said that some Kiwi cricketers were clear not to enter the auctions with any expectations.

Eventually, out of 24, franchises picked only seven cricketers as 17 players from New Zealand went unsold.

Brendon McCullum, Trent Boult, Tim Southee and Colin de Grandhomme (Royal Challengers Bangalore), Mitchell Santner (Chennai Super Kings), Kane Williamson (Sunrisers Hyderabad) and Colin Munro (Delhi Daredevils) were the seven cricketers from New Zealand that will play the tournament which kicks off on April 7 in Mumbai.

Mills, meanwhile, said that he did not see the auction pattern changing despite the opposition for the same from the various cricket players’ associations in the past.

"It's almost got to the point where there's more interest in the auction than the games and I think they'll keep doing it even though the general player view it is that there's better ways to do it,” concluded Mills.