I hope to carve out enough time to work on Ducking Beamer’s request to analyze whether an IPL player was worth the money the team paid for him, but before the quantitative analysis, let us take a quick qualitative look at this question. This might be over-complicating it, but here we go.
The basic problem which plagues every team sport is how to measure the value of an individual’s contribution. This is not as easy as counting hundreds or five-for’s. Consider Bangladesh and Australia in the Test Arena. Bangladesh loses almost all their matches by plenty to spare. Australia (until recently) won most of their matches comfortably. A team like England in the same period won some, lost some and drew some, with many matches that could have gone either way. Now, imagine a player, Batto (for lack of a better word!) playing for each team (work with me here!) and maintaining a 50+ average with several centuries and fifties.
Batto’s contribution to the Bangladeshi team is immense, as you can imagine. His contribution to the Australian team is not so much as there are many players contributing well during the same period. In the English team, his contribution is very significant. So what is his value? I would posit that Batto’s value to both the Bangladeshi and the Australian teams is low while that to the English team approaches a very high number. Why would I say that? Because the important thing is how much a person’s contribution matters to the end results.
For all of our Batto’s contribution to the Bangladeshi team, he has rarely helped them win any match. You could also take out Batto from the Australian team and he wouldn’t be missed much. But remove him from the England team and suddenly wins turn to draws and draw-able matches end in defeats. England should be paying a high price for Batto.
This perhaps explains (to some extent) the surprising love-hate affair many Indians have with Sachin Tendulkar in Tests. Yes, he is revered as a “God”, but it is a strange God indeed who is criticized anytime he fails to deliver a significant score. I think this is because there are very few matches where Sachin has made the difference between winning and losing. There have been winning matches where Sachin has made huge scores, but so have other batsmen. There have been matches that have been lost (like against Pakistan in 1999) where Sachin stood alone above the wreckage. This is not the implication that Sachin is a fair-weather batsman, but rather when he performs well despite his team members, the team still fails to win the match or loses.
Contrast this with Anil Kumble during the same period when he and Sachin were in the same team. In the early period, when India won matches, usually Kumble dominated the bowling charts. Sachin shared glory with Azharuddin, Sidhu, Kambli and then later Dravid, Laxman, Sehwag and Ganguly. India rarely won matches abroad and so hardly of Sachin’s contributions resulted in any benefit for India. On the other hand, when Kumble suddenly discovered the art of taking wickets overseas, India started winning abroad.
But wait, that’s not all. To go back to our example, removing Batto from the Bangladesh team would not make much difference to their results. After all, they are already losing everything! But that doesn’t mean Bangladesh should go ahead and just recruit anyone who can swing a bat. The obvious reason being that there are worse fish that can be thrown away (mixing my metaphors a bit). But also because there is a second important element, which is “growth of the team”, which is, is the team showing a consistent improvement in results.
For example, if Bangladesh lost all 15 Test matches in Year 1, then won one in Year 2, then went up to 3 wins in Year 3, then the team is on an upward trajectory. Even though the value of the star player is still low, removing him will disrupt the improvement. Also, other players (in or out of the team) are inspired by the star player and would likely help improve the team. Sachin Tendulkar is the classic example, inspiring millions of Indians and minting at least one copycat (initially!) superstar player in Sehwag. Mohammed Ashraful a lesser example, but you now know why he was in the team for much longer than he deserved.
With Australia also, you cannot be too cavalier with resources. The problem is that winning tends to be a habit and sports is as much mind as talent. The more you win, the more you intimidate your opposition even before you set foot on the ground. So, while losing a match once in a blue moon is not a big deal with respect to the statistical record, it can be a powerful signaling device to other teams that the fortress can be breached.
What all this means in summary is that the results of the team should be paramount. An individual’s heavy contribution (without team results) does matter to some extent and therefore they should be compensated for individual performances. But a significant part of a player’s compensation should be based on team performance. I assume (without doing any research) this is true of nation-level teams like India and Australia. Countries with more competitive teams get more matches and individuals are thus compensated more.
But in the IPL, as I understand it, every team has a cap on their budget. (Not a knock on the IPL, other sports also have similar setups). So you could have a team losing almost everything (as Deccan in the first IPL) and paying the same as the winner (Rajasthan). In fact, if I remember correctly, Rajasthan actually had the lowest budget of all the teams and some of the Pakistani players never got to play another IPL. That is harsh injustice.
In a perfect world, a huge pot of money would be set apart to pay the winning teams. For example, say, all the teams can only use 30% of their budget to pay at the beginning of the season. 14 matches -> 5% for each match. If you win the match, each player who played in the match gets a bite off the 5%. If they lose, they only get maybe 2.5% only.
The important thing is match contribution and team success. If you play well, only then you get selected for the next match and get paid. Otherwise you sit out and if you don’t come back, you could lose up to 50% of your salary. If you perform well and your team loses, you could lose up to 35% of your salary over the whole season.
