AMID all the fuss at the high value of the contracts on offer in the Indian Premier League (IPL), it would be easy to overlook the true significance of cricket’s first player-auction in Mumbai last week.

In one frenzied day, the traditional relationship between cricketers and their sponsors was turned on its head. Whereas before, the cricketer would expect to give his playing obligations priority and fit his sponsorship commitments around them, now he must consider himself an advertising vehicle for the industrialists, media group or consortium paying his wages.

This is the only explanation for the huge sums paid. Traditional cricket, as run by national boards or the ICC, has always tried to keep sponsors at a certain distance. Obviously, sponsorship has played a key part in the health of the modern game, but there was always a point beyond which sponsors could not go, hence ICC restrictions on the size of logos on players’ shirts and equipment.

But the IPL tournament has unashamedly put marketing first. The very teams are commercial enterprises. The Kolkata team has few sporting links with the city after which it is named; it is the property of an entertainment consortium headed by Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan and one of its biggest signings, the talented young fast bowler Ishant Sharma, hails from Delhi.

For the sake of his face and his ability to help promote Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, Sharma is now spliced to Kolkata for a cool £490,000 per IPL season. Not bad for six weeks of work, and especially not bad considering that Sharma receives a mere £3,000 for every Test match he plays. But these prices are only sustained if the players maintain their form at international level.

The only star name attached to Kolkata who has any real affiliation to the city is Sourav Ganguly, “the prince of Kolkata”, who as one of the icon players was forcibly attached to the team. The idea of icon players was a marketing one – it would have been absurd to have someone like Ganguly, so closely linked with Kolkata, representing anyone else; likewise Sachin Tendulkar and the Mumbai franchise.

Forget the cricket, every one of the 70-odd big-name signings in the IPL can now expect to sing for his supper. Mahendra Singh Dhoni fetched the highest price – £770,000 per season – not because he is the best cricketer but because he is the most marketable commodity in Indian cricket. He has the looks and flamboyant game to make him a commercial winner.

Given the brevity of Twenty20 games, Dhoni may spend more time advertising and promoting India Cements, which owns the Chennai franchise that bought India’s wicketkeeper-batsman, than playing the nine matches he might appear in during this year’s tournament, which runs from April 18 to June 1. Each team plays the others home and away before the top four reach a semi-final and final stage.

Vijay Mallya, who heads the United Breweries franchise that bought the Bangalore team for about £45m, estimated he might lose £3m on the first season but is happy to write down the sum as advertising expenses. And what a bargain, with Sony screening the tournament across Asia and the likelihood of the event being televised around the world. Ten Sports has bought the rights to show the matches in Australia and the games will most likely be available to viewers in England. The reason Andrew Symonds – not an obvious hero in India following his role in the Harbhajan Singh row in Sydney – alone of foreigners fetched a price above £500,000 is that it was believed he was guaranteed to be available for the whole IPL season, having said he had no wish to tour Pakistan. Since then, Cricket Australia has made it clear it will not allow Symonds to cherry-pick, so Hyderabad may have paid over the odds after all, though all fees will be recalculated according to the player’s availability.

Television has long influenced cricket’s calendar, but it has largely been a sympathetic bedfellow to the players. The new breed of sponsors emerging in India, paying the players so much more, may not be so understanding. The sponsor-led nature of the IPL contracts was one reason the Australian board was reluctant to give their players the go-ahead, in case deals with existing endorsements were compromised. Given that business is running the show, the project is almost guaranteed to be a success. It will be interesting to see whether stadiums are sold out, given that the tournament is being held outside India’s normal cricket season. It can only be a matter of time before an English player who has passed his international sell-by date severs his county contract and joins the gold-rush.

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