The Royal Betrayal

The morning of Wednesday, May 15, dawned like any other at the Trident Hotel in Nariman Point, Mumbai's southern tip. The lobby of the hotel buzzed with the kind of energy typical of a morning preceding an Indian Premier League match. The fierce May sun reflected off the grey sheet of the Arabian sea visible from the large glass windows fronting the hotel, and inside, an air-conditioned cool allowed players to relax, nursing fruit juices and energy drinks as they recovered from the previous night's exertions.

Players from the Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals, the latter having practiced late on Wednesday evening, finished breakfast and sauntered around the hotel. Some returned to their rooms to catch a quick nap, others met their Mumbai friends and relatives in the foyer, handing over tickets or passes to the night's game.

For the Rajasthan Royals, the Mumbai match was a big one. With 20 points in the bag, in third place, Rajasthan had already sealed a spot in the play-offs. A win here, however, would put them in the top two, giving them automatic entry into the Champions League, and also two bites of the cherry in a bid for victory in the current season. A team meeting was scheduled for1pm, but even before that, members of the support staff were busy.

The previous day's schedule had been choc-a-bloc with sponsor and partner events - a drained marketing team member declared that it had 'all been worth it' - and the Wednesday was devoted to cricket. Paddy Upton, the man running the Royals team off the field, and Rahul Dravid, the captain, were up and about getting their day sorted.

Dravid began the day, ironically enough, giving an interview to a newspaper that wanted to pursue a story on the challenges of managing a 'difficult character' like Sreesanth. Upton had a one-on-one meeting with Brad Hogg, and had scheduled chats with others before the actual team meeting began.

To watch the Royals at work is a lesson in how the IPL can actually fulfill one of its most tom-tommed catchphrases: where talent meets opportunity. Unlike the big teams like Mumbai and the Chennai Super Kings - who have made the most of player retention to stretch their large budgets and the intended salary cap to the limit - Rajasthan have tried to actually make a success of a cricket team in the league in all possible ways. The Royals do not have a sugar daddy who owns a team to satisfy his ego. They don't have a large corporation with an unlimited marketing budget that writes off all costs as promotional expenses.

Off the field, the team is run on a simple maxim, which is that you cannot spend any money that you do not earn. When the team was assembled at the auction and augmented with other contracts, Rajasthan spent approximately US$ 6 million for their entire squad. That amount would not even pay Sachin Tendulkar's wages for a year. Why, if reports are to be believed, it costs the Chennai Super Kings US$ 5 million just to put Ravindra Jadeja on the park.

Typically, IPL teams look to their big-ticket foreign and Indian players to power their progress to the final four. Bangalore would expect Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers and Virat Kohli to deliver eight wins between them, each singlehandedly contributing to individual wins. Kolkata Knight Riders are happy to splash cash on Sunil Narine, because they expect him to be able to pull a game back from the dead every now and then and turn it into a win.

Rajasthan, knowing full well that their approach is different, have had to look to their Indian domestic players to deliver the bulk of the 20 points needed to make the cut. Shane Watson was always likely to run away with a game or two, and Brad Hodge could chip in, but the rest of the weight would have to be carried by the Indian talent. And this is where talent really met opportunity. A Stuart Binny knew he would play every game, barring a drastic dip in form or an injury, and a Sanju Samson was not in the squad simply to make up the numbers. In order to get these players to do the job, however, the first thing needed was to identify the right kind of talent.

Zubin Bharucha, who was for a time the next big thing from the Bombay school of batsmanship, is a master at doing this, with his canny inclusion of the 42-year-old Pravin Tambe being a case in point. Once the right men were picked, the next job was to set up an environment that empowered the players to take charge of their own destinies. No one does this better than Upton, who wastes no time refining cover drives, but rather shows people how to become the best they can, on and off the field. When Dishant Yagnik walks out to bat ahead of Brad Hodge, he does not think the team are sending him out to pinch-hit as his wicket is expendable. Rather, he believes that his left-handedness is the ideal counter to the left-arm spinner in operation.

In many teams, the gulf between the marquee players and the lesser lights is huge. So much so that while one is flown on a chartered jet and given the keys to the owner's mansion on the beach, uncapped players may be asked to share hotel rooms to save costs. At Rajasthan, individuals may be treated differently, because one size never fits all, but they are all treated equally. Here, Dravid plays a big role. At 40, Dravid is well and truly done with playing the game, bar his commitment to the Royals, one he could have easily wriggled out of with an invented injury when Rajasthan picked him up for only US$ 500,000.

But Dravid chose to look at the opportunity before him, rather than the challenges ahead. And the 2013 run was nothing short of glorious. As one member of the Rajasthan team put it, they considered themselves the wily fox, snapping at the heels of the elephant in the jungle. They would come in for a bite and retreat out of harm's way, return again and nip away till the time was ripe to strike again. Remember how Ajit Chandila got Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar? The theory was a simple one - the two big guns would be so wary of being dismissed by such a no-name that they would be too tentative - and it worked like a charm. This was only one of the many moves that Rajasthan sprung on opponents this season.

When you look at the kind of work that has gone into Rajasthan's success - and Dravid admits he has spent more time on the physio's table now than ever before - the scale of the betrayal of the Royal Three is all the more galling. Chandila, Sreesanth and Ankeet Chavan have not merely thrown away their own futures, they've spat in the faces of good men who had set things up perfectly for a young cricketer to excel himself. While it's hard to believe that they did not know right from wrong, it's pretty clear that these cricketers could not have envisaged just how much grief and damage they would cause with their actions.