Indian Premier League auction is white noise to many of us - Chris Waters comment

The five choices were as follows: Mitchell Starc, Gerald Coetzee, Pat Cummins, Travis Head, Shardul Thakur.

If only a sixth option had existed: Couldn’t Care Less.

That would have got my vote and, I dare say, that of many readers of this newspaper.

Because, for some of us, this sort of thing is nothing more than white noise - meaningless sound around the subject of money, that most ugliest of all topics.

For the record, Mitchell Starc won the day, the former Yorkshire pace bowler becoming not just the most expensive player at the IPL 2024 auction, but also the most expensive in the tournament’s history, bought for 24.75 crore (about £2.3m) by Kolkata Knight Riders.

Small wonder that the Australian later popped up on social media, grinning from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat, and talking about how he “can’t wait to get to Eden Gardens to experience the home fans, the home crowd and the atmosphere” and, he might have added, to get his paws on a seven-figure pay cheque for around seven weeks’ work.

Envy, of course, is one of the seven deadly sins, liable to provoke, as St Thomas Aquinas observed, “grief at another’s prosperity”.

Few would quibble with such a windfall were they, too, gifted with the skill to bowl 90mph inswinging yorkers that have a habit of uprooting stumps and bringing in brass.

Indeed, despite cricket’s popularity from Sydney to Kolkata and all points between/beyond, cricketers are paid less than many leading stars in other sports; Jon Rahm has just moved to golf’s LIV Series for £450m, for example, while Lewis Hamilton reportedly earns £40m a year, despite not having won an F1 race for two years (it almost goes without saying that most footballers are blessed with more money than sense).

But the particular problem with the IPL and the auction concept is that it is essentially “cattle for sale”; each year it gets ever more unedifying, less out-of-touch with the man on the street, less relevant to the lives of spectators in the stands.

Such public demonstrations of spending ability have nothing to do with the essence of sport and leave many of us cold.

The ESPNcricinfo live blog, expert and informative though it was, contained headlines such as “CSK splurge 14 crore on Daryl Mitchell”, along with enthusiastic interludes such as “it’s almost hammer time” and “let’s all breathe!”

Yes, let’s – and let’s reflect how some people can seemingly get excited about absolutely anything.

Apparently, the ten IPL franchises had 262.95 crore (USD 31.58m) to spend at auction.

In addition to Starc’s record price tag, Cummins had earlier broken the IPL record himself when he went for 20.5 crore (just under £2m) to Sunrisers Hyderabad, a move that sparked an equally enthusiastic response from Cummins when he stated: “Pumped to be joining SRH for the forthcoming IPL season.”

We bet you are, Pat, lad.

Chris Woakes, the England all-rounder, went for just under £400,000 to Punjab Kings, while the Yorkshire and England batsman Harry Brook joined Delhi Capitals for £380,000.

Brook might have to choose a slightly less expensive brand of champagne to celebrate, however, seeing as he had a £1.3m gig last time with Sunrisers Hyderabad.

That was some outlay given that Brook scored 190 runs in 11 innings – 100 of them in one knock against Kolkata Knight Riders.

Money for old rope is the expression that springs to mind, while others spout – as violins play – the usual caveats about the careers of professional sportspeople being short, and so on.

This, though, is the nightmare vision that some of us feared when T20 came on the scene and was soon allowed to spiral out of control.

Now, surprise surprise, the game is all about money - or at least as much about money as it is about glory, an irreversible trend.

Small wonder that people don’t want to play Test/first-class cricket anymore, with Sam Billings the latest to jump off that train, while reports that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is in advanced talks about financing a second IPL in the autumn months can only hasten the decline of international cricket.

The Saudis are already pumping more money than you can shake a piggy bank at into football, F1, golf and boxing, which conveniently overlook any moral concerns/track records regarding human rights, so it is hardly a surprise they have cricket in their sights.

But at what price the game itself and the people who watch it?

That, as ever, is the 24.75 crore question...