Virat Kohli and value for money

I wonder whether Virat Kohli was paying attention on Friday evening when the BCCI revealed its list of contracted players for the forthcoming season. Was he slightly peeved when he saw some of the nine names that feature in the top bracket, or did he shrug his shoulders and decide not to care since that's all he can do about it anyway?

It's been Kohli's best year in international cricket in all formats of the game, a year that has coincided rather dramatically with the abject failure of several of his teammates. But the list the BCCI released last week seems to not-so-subtly suggest that performance is incidental to seniority and, in more recent times, which IPL team you play for, when it comes to deciding who's in and where they figure in the ABC of contract arithmetic.

The intention is not to pick on individuals and single them out for non-performance but questions need to be asked of the BCCI about players who continue to retain top billing despite a terrible year, or two in some cases.

The media, however, seems to have stopped asking these questions. As surprising as the list is the way it's been reported, without much analysis or inquiry. Is it enough to say 'Ashwin Promoted, Harbhajan Demoted' or 'BCCI Announces New Central Contracts' in matter-of-fact fashion, bereft of any perspective when it comes to assessing the BCCI's annual review of the country's top talent?

Not too long ago, the annual contracts were a big story, not just by way of a big deal between the BCCI and the players but news of significant importance to reporters on the beat. Introduced during Jagmohan Dalmiya's tenure as board president in 2004, it had taken nearly three years of intense dialogue between the senior players, including Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, and the BCCI, to work out the grades, the amounts, the list of players and the terms. And the annual contracts were reported in much detail and accompanied by a thorough appraisal of the BCCI's decisions in keeping with the players' performance that year.

So why has the media stopped caring about who figures where and why? Is it because the list is delivered straight to our inboxes that we now take it for granted and have reduced it to a footnote in the cricket stories of the day? Is it because every story, especially on news television, is a breaking story and the priority is merely to get the news out without providing any real context, proper perspective or profound thought?

Or is it simply just this? Who cares about the plain economics of players' annual contracts when you have the freakonomics of the IPL? After all, what is a crore [ten million] a year compared to the far more sexy story of player auctions culminating in 12-crore deals for six weeks? And that's just the official figure. The IPL auctions are a story for which newsrooms plan days in advance with well-designed graphics, a battery of experts and minute-by-minute analysis. The vast sums on offer in the IPL seem to have blindsided not just the players but the media as well.

Coming back to the players' annual contracts, the BCCI, incidentally, is the only board to reveal what each player will be paid. For a board that is otherwise so cloak and dagger in its approach, it's surprising that it has no qualms about sharing details when it comes to the players' contracts. But that's where it stops because no questions at all are entertained on the confabulations and criteria that determine this list. Just as no answers are provided on matters of selection, glaring cases of conflict of interest, or updates on players' injuries.

A couple of years ago, a journalist friend made the mistake of asking N Srinivasan, then BCCI secretary and now President, about the contracts since there were a few deserving names that did not make the grade and some rather curious selections. He was promptly slapped with this reply, "Why are you interested in the players' contracts? Do we ask you what you earn and how you negotiate?"

Right, that settles it then. 'Ask no questions, be told no lies' is increasingly the board's motto when it comes to dealing with the media. The BCCI has the right to remain silent. And we don't dare question that.