Thursday, May 15, 2008

Dravid & Goliath..err...Mallya

Just because Vijay Mallya of the UB Group has invested huge money running into more than Rs. 44 Crores to buy the Bangalore franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and another Rs. 20 Crores to buy the players, he does not have the right to humiliate in public Rahul Dravid, one of the stalwarts of Indian Cricket.
In spite of the public rebuke from his owner, Dravid has maintained a dignified silence & refused to comment or react to media persons in Mohali saying it is not the right place & he will put forth his views at the appropriate forum. That shows Dravid's gentlemanly side, yet another time.

I have a few questions to Mallya, who has suddenly woken up about his Bangalore Royal Challenger's Team composition.
1. If he thinks Dravid is not the right person to be in the team, why, in the first place, did he not protest to the IPL Governing Council when they made Dravid an Icon player?
2. Second, if Mallya wanted to get the players of his choice like Dhoni, McCullum and Uthappa, he should have bid for them much more than $ 3 Mln. for which these 3 have been picked up by other franchises. In such a case, including with Dravid's Icon fees, these 4 players alone would have almost exhausted BRC's spending cap of $ 5 Mln. So, would he have then played only with these 4 or managed with sub-standard local players bought at throw-away prices?
3. If by acting like a cry-baby and blaming everybody else instead of himself for BRC's debacle in IPL, even though he was one of the three people buying the players, does Mallya's think he can revive the fortune & morale of his team?
4. Last but not the least, the way he has treated the BRC's personnel & the public humiliation heaped on them by him & his corporate sycophants, does Mallya seriously believe in future any other player would be willing to join his team?
Though I am not saying Dravid is not at fault, by doing things the way he did, Mallya is pushing Dravid & BRC more into rock-bottom because of the low morale & total insecurity they will be feeling. That's why, yesterday, Dravid had to run back to his bus & abandon his plan of having lake-side meals with his team mates when news persons surrounded him in Delhi to get his reaction.
I'm praying saner counsel prevails on Mallya's side very soon so that he can show more patience and sit with Dravid & Team BRC and allow them some time to recover & at least next year BRC can try to do better. But for this to happen, Mallya should first stop listening to his corporate cronies who keep on feeding biased opinions purely from a business & investment perspective and without any iota of cricketing knowledge.

5 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Hi Arun,very good post.I guess Mallya should have shown some professional courtesey by waiting till the end of the tournament.This shows his lack of understanding of the game and he has just blown out his uglier side of corporate Ego by making such illogical comments such as he was prevented from bidding for the best of the players.He could have revealed this just immediately after the auction

Kalyan said...

Hi Arun,

Welcome to Blogging. Your one of the finest essayist whom i admire reading.. Your emails always were long and rich in content... now it will be the pleasure to read ur blogs

Regarding this article u had post, i agree with you .. but there is a lot of fun going around about this tussle between Mallaya and Dravid.
(Refer to one of my post if your not offended)

Actually the difference i can relate is working for an US-MNC and Desi Company

Regards
Kalyan.B
Bangalore

M Arunachalam said...

Hi Dharma/Kalyan,

Thanks to both of you. Without the encouragement from the two of you, I would not have ventured into this.

Also, thanks for your comments.

Pl keep visiting my blog & give your valuable feedback.

With Luv,

Arun

Unknown said...

Nice post. But What else you expect from a businessman like mallyya. He has not invested money for doing some service to the sports. IPL T20 is 20% cricket and 80% Paisa. Thats it. Keep blogging.