The money-spinning Indian Premier League has penalised the Jaipur franchise for falling short of spending the mandatory minimum amount in the landmark players' auction.
Jaipur bought only eight players, spending US $29,25,000, a sum well below the required 3.3 million dollar mark.
A senior official of the IPL governing council said that the Jaipur franchise has been asked to deposit the difference between the minimum of 3.3 million dollars and the amount they spent at the auction, which was held in Mumbai on Wednesday.
The difference can also be deducted from the amount that the IPL will pay the teams, the official said, adding, ''But this could have been their strategy to save their money for purchases outside the pool.''
At the other end of the spectrum, five teams -- Mohali, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata -- have gone above the maximum limit of five million dollars that was set for the auction.
However, IPL rules state that if a player is expected to be either completely unavailable or only available for less than four of the matches in 2008, 25 per cent of the fee bid for that player in the auction will count against the five million dollar purse.
Many players, including all the centrally-contracted Australian cricketers, will fall in this category and the figures spent for the players who are not available will need to be modified accordingly.
All the above teams have players who are likely to skip a part or whole of the inaugural season.
According to the rules, for example, the purchase for $400,000 of a player, who is expected to be completely unavailable in 2008, will cause a deduction of $100,000 from the franchise's overall five million dollar purse.
