IPL4 auction fever shakes global media

BANGALORE, INDIA: The fourth season of Indian Premier League (IPL) is back. Starting April 2011 the cricket lovers would be enjoying every moment of the game. But months before, IPL has become an international headline. The reason is the auction that took place on January 8-9, 2011 in Bangalore.

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In order to intensify the spirit, the entire process of auction of the players was telecast live on television/web, while live feeds were shared on mobiles. This brought a massive response from the global viewers.

From Vijay Mallya (Royal Challengers) and Nita Ambani (Mumbai Indians) to Bollywood stars like Preity Zinta (Kings XI Punjab) and Shilpa Shetty (Rajasthan Royals), among others, the auction was literally a star-studded one.

Mentions of IPL 4 auction or IPL auction 2011 and the players involved like Gautam Gambhir, Yusuf Pathan, Rohit Sharma, Saurav Ganguly could be seen all over the web world. While some are winners, some are big-time losers. While some created history with the amount they won, some others did so by not having a single bidder.

Interestingly, at one point of time, a few lesser-known names (like Ravindra Jadeja, Umesh Yadav) were leading the top trending list in Twitter worldwide, making twitterer of other geographies wonder about them. A few tweets mentioned, “Why is Umesh trending? Who is he? Why are people talking about IPL? Do I know IPL?

Apart from increasing awareness, the auction invited a lot of debates in terms of comments and feedback. This season's auction was different from last years. While on one hand, Gautam Gambhir (who will play for Kolkata Knight Riders) received the highest bid, the veterans of the last season like Lara, Jayasuriya and Ganguly were not among the chosen ones.

It was this unpredictability that made the news. Like the little known Australian Daniel Christian, who went for a whopping $900,000 to Deccan Chargers!

The fever of cricket is yet to catch up, but with increased number of teams (previously 8 now 10), increased number of matches (previously 60 now 74) and increased excitement, IPL4 will make its presence felt throughout, not only social media.

And now let's wait for the mysterious “Fake IPL Player” to get some hot news and gossip from inside the T-20 arena!