Stop moaning about the money
Snap post on the Hundred auction - human nature takes its course
Ricky Castillo is a pretty good golfer. Last year, he finished in 100th place on the PGA Tour money list, earning $1,409,677. Not bad, but could be better when you realise that everyone in the top 50 took home at least $3m. The Top 10? Entry to that club began at $11m, and topped out with Scottie Scheffler at more than $50m.
Cast back 30 years, to 1995, and Ricky Castillo’s earnings would have secured him third place on the money list, just behind the winner, Greg Norman. The Great White Shark’s $1.6m would have secured him 94th spot last year.
What happened between then and now, between Greg Norman and Ricky Castillo? In golf, that question has a two word answer: Tiger Woods. He turned pro in 1996, and became the game’s transformative force, driving its global popularity and forcing up its prize pots. A lot of golfers owe a lot of their fortune to Tiger Woods.
Does cricket have its own two-word answer? Maybe, and if it does it would be Lalit Modi, the man who conceived of both the IPL and its player auction. Lalit is on the outs now, but a lot of cricketers owe a lot of their fortune to him, and there will be a few more once the Hundred auction concludes today.
When I was helping Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber make Death of a Gentleman, they shot some amazing footage of Chris Gayle as he described waking up to a phone call after the first IPL auction to find he’d been bought for $800,000. At the time he was receiving a couple of thousand dollars per international appearance for the West Indies. He would become another transformative force.
It’s self-evident that sport operates as a cut-throat meritocracy. T20 auctions simply stick a price tag on the goods, make it all obvious. From day one, it has offered an alternative value system to the one provided by national boards and selectors. In that way, it has been more, rather than less, democratic, but democracy will never be a defining force in sport.
Kevin Pietersen was an early adopter of the IPL, and is rightly having the last laugh as the ECB prostrate themselves before the BCCI and the franchises. No one gave Pietersen anything, and he needed those sharp elbows that dug into so many ribs. In meritocracies, even those built around teams, individuals must be self-centred.
That’s why there will be little sympathy for the arguments about some of the ‘lower’ sums handed out to the rank and file players in the Hundred – those lucky enough to get any kind of a gig. In the women’s tournament, that is £15,000, the men’s £31,000.
Well, in a country facing another fuel crisis, £15,000 for six weeks’ work doesn’t sound like a bad job to me. Not quite as good as Ricky Castillo’s maybe, but then this is only the beginning. In golfing terms, the Hundred is 1995. The competition needs the big names and the headline numbers to assert its position on the stage, to drive it forwards and upwards within the market in which it operates. It’s not a democracy, and never will be. The auction just makes that fact even more obvious.
Would be good if some of the money washing around found its way to the cricket board of West Indies, for example. Latest rumour is the Caribbean regional 4-day red ball competition reduced to 3 matches per team, potentially all against the same opposition!