The first season was expected to get sparks flying around everywhere, with the amount of money being poured into the game, the tournament was scrutinised from different aspects.

Apart from the high scores on the ground the franchisees expected high revenues off it. According to Manish Porwal, Chief Executive, Percept Talent Management, “The IPL was either going to be big or bust”. The cricket had over delivered in terms of entertainment.

The IPL almost became like a daily soap with housewives being more keen in test records of Albie Morkel than the usual kitchen politics. Lalit Modi had been smart by staging the event in the summer season which was a lean season otherwise.

Apart from Modi, two franchisees stand out with respect to being smart buyers. They are the defending champions Rajasthan Royals and the GMR team, Delhi Daredevils.

Rajasthan Royals, was the cheapest franchisee coming to Manoj Badale, Chairman, Emerging Media for US $ 67 million. Apart from being the cheapest franchisee, they made some very smart buys. They had a pretty good success rate in terms of big buys. There two most expensive players were Md. Kaif, and Yusuf Pathan.

So that is a pretty good record as Yusuf Pathan emerged as one of the rising stars of Indian cricket.

Speaking of the Royals, the name that comes to everybody’s mind is that of the captain, Shane Warne. His charisma made him stand apart from the team and made him earn respect from his teammates. His leadership, in which he made every ‘unexpensive’ player of his team feel like a million dollars.

Once, he introduced Ravindra Jadeja to Harsha Bhogle referring him as India’s next rockstar.

This year the team has got a glamorous boost, with Shilpa Shetty coming on board after she bought a 12% stake in the franchisee. The Royals have maintained there style of picking up players who are less known fro there star status than there performance. They have bought Tyron Henderson for $ 650,000, which is a good buy considering that he has made loads of runs in the English Twenty20 league and with no international commitments will be available for all matches.

Another team which played safe all along, including the second auction, was the Delhi Daredevils. The teams were already been built, the only question was of adding and subtracting players. And the Daredevils came out with a plan. They ended up buying David Warner, an upcoming star for the Australians, Paul Collingwood and Owias Shah.

The Delhi team probably has the best opening partnership in the league. According to Harsha ‘Last year, if you had to beat the Daredevils, you had to get the top three out quickly. This year it will be interesting to see how Mcgrath bowls considering that he has rusted for another year.

When asked Amrit Mathur, CEO of Delhi Daredevils, he stressed on the fact that you need good players around for all 14 matches. ‘Balance Sheet is of importance to us’ said Mathur.
Source – espnstar.com