CELEBRITY owners of the Indian Premier League cricket franchises have brought glamour ... to the player auctions of the last two years. But this year's bidding for cricketers had an added element of farce not even one of the 11 players from Pakistan, the current world champion in the Twenty20 format, was bought by any of the eight franchises. While rookie cricketers were bought for staggering sums, world class players such as Shahid Afridi and Umar Gul ... found no takers. In the absence of encouraging signals from the Indian government or the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the owners of the franchises were not convinced that the Pakistani players would be able to get the necessary clearances. ... There were of course heightened security concerns, amid fears that rightwing elements such as the Shiv Sena might disrupt matches. In any case, the team-owners ... took the lazy way out.

Understandably, the snubbed players and the Pakistan Cricket Board have taken offence at the mishandling of the auction. ... So what changed between Jan 6, when the final list of Pakistani cricketers was cleared, and Jan 19, the day of the auction? If doubts over the availability of the 11 players in the context of visa and security-related uncertainties were the reasons ... the proper course would have been to exclude them from the bidding pool.... Instead, those running the IPL and the owners managed to humiliate the Pakistani cricketers.... Pakistan's interior minister ... saw in it an indication that India was “not serious about the peace process” ... [This] may be exaggerated but there is no denying that sport. can serve as an effective way of promoting people-to-people contacts.... [T]he BCCI as well as the government ... must do their best to see that the fallout from this unedifying episode is contained within IPL-III. — (Jan 22)