Dravid is in trouble. Deep trouble. It looks almost inevitable that Mallya is going to do everything he can to dump Dravid at the end of the season, his “icon player” status notwithstanding. Mallya has become increasingly outspoken against Dravid’s captaincy with every loss that the Royal Challengers have had to suffer, and in his latest outburst, threatened to get rid of Dravid.It doesn’t look like Vijay Mallya is just talking here. He looks like he’s pretty serious. And there are some ways in which he can pull this off. Firstly, the contracts that have been signed are technically for 3 years, but Lalit Modi has been dropping more and more hints of the “trading window” that is set to open in February.
The first thing is that the $5 million salary cap will be lifted, freeing up Mallya to possibly buy out Dravid’s contract for the remaining 2 years and hiring away players form the other teams. We’ve seen that the 4-international-player limit is causing some in-form international players to sit out, and it can only get worse next year with more players likely to take time away from the national cricket to play in the IPL. That means that there will be lots of quality players to chose from.
The trading window that opens in February will provide an opportunity to rebalance teams
At this point, it is still not clear how exactly the player trading is going to work. Since all the contracts stand for 3 years, will the teams buy out the contracts by paying the equivalent of 2 years of salary? Or will that cost go lower? What happens if Mallya doesn’t play Dravid in ANY match? Will his salary still have to be paid? With the salary cap being removed, this might be a loophole that might be used to keep low-performing players away.
This is going to get really messy (read: fun) after the season. There are some obviously overpaid and obviously underpaid players, and the teams will be looking to rationalize their prices. And my gut feel tells me that Lalit Modi is going to bend under pressure from the franchise owners and change the rules on the players.