Former IPL auctioneer Richard Madley 'bruised' after being fired by BCCI

MATT ROLLER: "I’ve been involved from the start – I was the last remaining person – heads have rolled, personnel have changed over the years, but the auctioneer has stayed constant with only good relationships."

In February 2008, a conference room in Mumbai’s Hilton Towers hotel was the venue for one of cricket’s landmark moments.

If the magnitude of change brought by Lalit Modi's proposal for an Indian franchise league had not already become apparent, the drop of the gavel after the nascent Chennai franchise’s $1.5 million bid for Mahendra Singh Dhoni confirmed that the first IPL auction and its effects would revolutionise the sport in the coming years.

In all, some $42 million changed hands that day as 80 players were allocated teams. Cricinfo’s Sidharth Monga dubbed it “the day cricketers sold like stocks”; Brett Lee compared it to the start of baseball's World Series.

Immediately, it was evident that the auction represented a seismic shock.

Since then, almost everything has changed about the IPL. While teams picked players based on reputation, personal experience, and gut feel back then, they now employ analysts and consultants to determine auction strategies.

Modi, once the trailblazer, is effectively in exile in London. Even Dhoni, still Chennai’s icon over ten years later, has seen his status start to fade, with both his spot in India’s ODI team and his effectiveness as a T20 cricketer under scrutiny. And this week, in a one-line email from the BCCI, one of the final survivors of that first auction was shown the door.

^{Former chairman of the Indian Premier League Lalit Modi}

The gavel that dropped after Chennai’s final bid for Dhoni belonged to Richard Madley, perhaps best known in the UK for his appearances on the BBC’s Bargain Hunt, who has used it in every IPL auction since. But, without explanation, ‘the Hammerman’ has been told he is surplus to requirements.

“I feel genuinely sad about how I have been treated,” Madley reflects from his home in Wiltshire. “The way it was phrased meant that some people think I stood down from the role of my own volition, but that is simply not the case. This decision to drop me, in cricketing terms – or release me, in IPL terms – has come as a shock.”

While he stresses that his replacement as the competition's auctioneer might not be permanent, and that he hopes to be asked back in future, the decision has incensed Madley’s cult following in India.

He has spent much of the past 48 hours reading through his Twitter notifications, trying to reply to each and every supportive message that has come his way.

“I’ve been genuinely touched by the response from my followers over there,” he says, “who have genuinely welcomed me over the years and hold me in high regard; they’ve taken me into their hearts. I’ve got 800 or so personal responses since Wednesday - I feel very strongly about it, and want to make clear that I have not resigned or retired.

“The question is: what’s going on at the BCCI? It’s the world’s most powerful cricket board, and everyone is denying making the decision to fire the IPL auctioneer. In fact, some of them are saying ‘this is a terrible decision’ – somebody, somewhere, has made it, and I’m pushing for them to come forward.

^{Richard Madley had been the IPL auctioneer since it started in 2008}

"They made it clear to me that they were looking at alternative auctioneers during the summer. Sometimes there’s a bit of bravado in life and business – no player is too big for the team – and it was a comment made that I took on board, but when I was asked if I was available for December 18, I interpreted that in the same way that I have for the last ten years.”

It would be wrong to interpret Madley’s reaction as bitterness; instead, it is tinged with sadness at having lost a position that allowed him to connect with cricket fans he could never have hoped to reach without it, and which he took on as something of a pioneer.

For long before Kevin Pietersen and Dimi Mascarenhas led the way for Brits in the IPL, it was Madley who took centre stage.

“It was probably January 2008 that I read of this extraordinary idea that they would auction off the players," he recalls. "I got an email from Andrew Wildblood [a senior vice-president at IMG, who devised the concept for the IPL with Modi] one wet Tuesday morning, saying ‘Have you read the papers, Madders? Cricketers auction in India! Up your street?’

“I responded ‘yes, sounds crazy to me, but my gavel is polished and my bag is always packed’. He wrote back that he was serious, so I cleared my diary, drove up to IMG HQ and thrashed out a structure for an auction. Two weeks later I was in Mumbai, and the rest is auction and cricket history.

"I’ve been involved from the start – I was the last remaining person – heads have rolled, personnel have changed over the years, but the auctioneer has stayed constant with only good relationships. Naturally, I’m bruised.”

Madley has seen the auction process change from the mad rush of 2008 to the savvy, analytics-driven affair that it is today first-hand, and says that teams have become “more sophisticated” as the IPL has grown.

^{Hugh Edmeades, Madley's replacement}

“In the formative years, it was a shoot-out. Nobody knew what was happening; players were being bought on reputation forged in the five-day game, and there were Test match players at the end of their careers making out like bandits. That changed: things developed, and the scouting system now is very efficient. Owners don’t chuck money at you – they are astute businessmen.

"There is a naïve misconception from people who don’t understand the IPL that if you’re an average county pro, you wish you were in the IPL auction to make a fortune. You won’t!”

Madley’s replacement for this auction is Hugh Edmeades, a freelance auctioneer with 38 years of experience at Christie’s to his name. Madley predicts Edmeades will be under scrutiny despite the fact December’s auction is brief compared to the usual gruelling affair, but offers him some advice.

“It’s like no other auction in the world. The stakes are enormous and the focus is massive. Do it your own way: this is not Christie’s or Sotherby’s, this is the IPL. You are the host, the MC, the sole arbiter of the transactions.

"There is one umpire in the room, and it’s a big one: you have to scan through 180 degrees, from deep square leg to backward point with nobody else to consult. There are 85 million people watching live; it’s hot, and the world is hanging on your every word. The scale of the thing will come as a surprise, and I wish him luck – but not too much luck!"

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