S.Africa set to earn a billion rand

The Indian Premier League (IPL)cricket tournament will bring an expected investment of about 1 billion rand (100 million U.S dollars) to South Africa, as said by the South African President Kgalema Motlanthe  at the tournament’s opening ceremony in Cape Town. IPL is providing 10 million rand (1 million U.S. dollars) in scholarship funds for 300 students and 32 schools.

“Together, we formed the greatest partnership so that India, Brazil and South Africa could stand together and navigate a path through the unpredictable waters of globalization.”Motlanthe said choosing South Africa to host the tournament was a “tremendous vote of confidence”, but also inspired serious reflection.Nevertheless, he said choosing SA as a host showed confidence in its ability to host the IPL, the Confederations Cup and the 2010 FIFA World Cup.“It is a vote of confidence in our facilities, our telecommunications capability and our cricket-loving fans who have already snapped up all the tickets for the IPL matches.

Motlanthe said the unique aspect of the IPL tournament was that it meant some opponents now became teammates and vice versa.“In entertaining us, the IPL teaches us this important lesson in life: no task is too big, no problem is insurmountable, no disagreement or rivalry is permanent, and every challenge is an opportunity to demonstrate our character and resilience,he added.

IPL player pricing: Dhoni worth $1.5 mn !!

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has changed the face of Indian cricket, drawing huge audiences, corporate biggies, film stars and ravishing cheerleaders from abroad. A sensation in itself, it intrigued minds at the country’s premier management institute by its pure economics. ET reports:Professor Satish Deodhar and fellowship student Siddhartha Rastogi at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) are jointly working on a paper to figure out the economics of this cricketing revolution. The paper, Player pricing and valuation of cricketing attributes: Exploring the IPL Twenty20 Vision, was recently uploaded on the institute’s official website. Deodhar said, “The study aims to find what implicit process of valuation may have occurred in deciding the final bid prices of the players, when team owners bid for cricketers for a total of $42 million. Given the data on final bid prices, a host of cricketing attributes of the players, and other relevant information, we try to understand which attributes seem important and what could be their relative valuations.” The duo hopes this study will facilitate better understanding of player price formation, offer benchmark estimates for bidding for new players and underscore the predictive value of such data driven analysis. This season, Dhoni’s charisma and association is expected to work wonders with actresses. Andrew Symonds could be a crowd-puller due to the controversies he has been in, especially in the Indian context. Valuation estimates of important player attributes: An Indian player, on an avg, fetches a premium of $203,156 over foreign players A half century in any form of ICC approved match fetches $2683 An increase in T20 batting average by 1 run fetches $4658 One more stumping in any form of ICC approved match fetches $2596 An additional wicket in any form of ICC approved match fetches $377