Just heard that IPL media rights are about to go on crazy mode (base price is $4.5 Billions).
It will be similar to the auction for the two new IPL franchises. Everyone was expecting around ₹5,000 crore and the base price was just ₹2,000 crore. In the end, the two franchises were sold for a total of ₹12,690 crore, which is more than 6 times the base price. I expect the same to happen with media rights as well. Some of the players are in desperate need of a greater market share and they will splurge big money to get the IPL rights. I won't be surprised if BCCI receives more than $10 billion for all the four packages.
Not surprising at all considering the fact that IPL keeps getting more and more popular as time passes despite the recent drop in viewership ratings.
$9- $10 billion was looking realistic target at one point but yesterday Amazon has pulled out so bidding war might not reach there (they did the same thingy in last auction too) but again it's hard to predict the outcome in these crazy bid war.
To be honest, India was a little overconfident. They had posted such a big total on the board that they thought they don't need to worry at all, but they were so wrong. SA played really well to win this match. And there were some very obvious mistakes in the captaincy of India. India really failed to do anything in the bowling department.
I felt like it was opposite, bowlers were fairly nervous ( bowlers of both teams).
I feel there is none to be blamed. Normally South Africa used to perform well against India. This time the performance of South Africa was found better in bowling and batting. When it comes to India, they managed to take few wickets and that isn't enough to make a win against the current squad of South Africa. Captaincy is important and I don't find anything wrong with Rishab.
Not criticising Rishab as captain because it was his first match leading the Indian team and you're bound to make some mistake but He's also captain of delhi and Axar patel playing under his captaincy for couple of years now so Pant should have known that Axar is better option in powerplay instead of chahal ( Axar has bowled in powerplay many times for the DC)