If Cricket were a set of stocks
By Sundaramurthy Vadivelu
Cricket is the most popular sport in India. It is not just a passion but an obsession in the Indian subcontinent. British left India in 1947 but English language and cricket still remain in this country.
| India’s captain Kapil Dev lifting Prudential Cup at Lord’s, London on June 25, 1983 | Indian team posing after winning inaugural Twenty 20 World Cup at The Wanderers, Johannesburg on September 24, 2007 |
India’s first triumph in an international tournament was its victory over West Indies in the Prudential Cup final at Lord’s back in 1983. Twenty four years later, India beat arch-rival Pakistan at the inaugural Twenty 20 World Cup at The Wanderers in Johannesburg, South Africa on September 24, 2007.
India plays Test matches (lasting maximum 5 days), one day internationals (also known as limited overs internationals) and Twenty 20 matches (20 overs a side; an over consists of 6 legal deliveries).
In India, domestic cricket (also known as first class cricket) is well organized. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the sport’s richest national entity and its affiliate members (the state cricket associations) are classifed as ‘Elite’ (now ‘Super’) or ‘Plate’ according to their performance.
There are several domestic cricket competitions held during India’s cricket season, starting October each year. These are Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy, Deodhar Trophy, Irani Trophy etc. Apart from these main events, state level and district level matches are also played.
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A view of Eden Gardens, Kolkata with a capacity of 100,000 people
Indian players excited as they won the second Test against Australia at Eden Gardens in March 2001 after following on
The Virtual Cricket Exchange
There are some similarities between India’s stock markets and cricket. Mumbai is the commercial capital of India and the country’s premier stock exchanges (BSE and NSE) are located at Mumbai. BCCI’s headquarters is located at Cricket Club of India, Mumbai. Large companies such as Reliance, Tata, Hindustan Unilever etc. have their corporate offices in Mumbai; India’s Warren Buffet, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, is also based at Mumbai. BSE accounts for over two thirds of the total trading volume in the country and NSE is the third largest stock exchange in the world in terms of transaction volume. Many of India’s famous batsmen are from Mumbai; some names include Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sanjay Manjrekar, Sandeep Patil, Vijay Hazare, Ravi Shastri, Ajit Wadekar, Vinod Kambli etc. Gavaskar and Tendulkar have scored more than 10,000 Test runs each.
The India Street attempts to form a virtual stock exchange where cricket players will be listed as stocks and traded.
While BSE Sensex constitutes 30 stocks, VICEX (Virtual India Cricket Stock Exchange Index) will constitute 15 Indian players. The total number of shares available for each stock (player) will be computed from their performance on field, like number of runs scored, wickets taken, catches held etc. The 15 players will comprise of 7 batsmen, 1 all rounder, 1 wicket keeper and 6 bowlers.
How the Stock is graded
Each international run scored by a player will fetch 2 shares. A century will yield 500 additional shares while a fifty will yield 200 extra shares. Each catch will fetch 100 shares (because catches win matches!) and each wicket will give 50 shares (Test matches can be won only by taking 10 wickets twice; so more importance for these!). Stumpings will give 50 shares each to both wicket keeper and the bowler. For domestic competitions, the above numbers will be divided by 2 i.e. run, century, fifty, catch, wicket and stumping will give 1, 250, 100, 50, 25 and 25 shares.
For example, Sachin Tendulkar has scored 11150 and 15425 runs in Test matches and ODI’s respectively. He has 194 international wickets; He has taken 209 catches. He has scored 78 hundreds and 128 fifties. After applying the above valuations and adding his domestic performance he gets 172,269 shares.
The following table gives the number of shares for the senior players in the Indian cricket team.
| Player | Shares |
| Tendulkar, SR | 172269 |
| Ganguly, SC | 118291 |
| Dravid, RS | 144475 |
| Sehwag, V | 66045 |
| Singh, Yuvraj | 44933 |
The Test and ODI players will be ranked based on International Cricket Council’s (ICC) rating and weightage on the index will be arrived based on these ratings.
Like BSE Midcap Index, PSU Index, Metal Index, Realty Index etc., Virtual India Cricket Stock Exchange may have a Batsmen Index, Bowler Index, Fielder Index, Allrounder Index and Wicketkeeper Index.
Cricket Virtual Stock Price Movements
Unlike the real stock exchange where the company’s total shares will remain same (unless a bonus, stock split or rights issue is planned), the Virtual India Cricket Stock Exchange shares will keep changing, depending on the performance of the players. The listing requirements could be at least 10 international appearences for Index based stocks and 25 domestic appearances for others. A stock may be delisted once a player retires, or banned for life.
Possible reasons for a stock’s upmove in Virtual India Cricket Stock Exchange may include a player scoring a hundred or double hundred, taking a hat-trick, scoring six sixes in an over, etc. Similarly, a state level player’s stock may gain substantially if the player is selected into the national team based on his good performance. Other reasons may include new captaincy, return to international cricket because of an injury or layoff etc. after good performance in domestic matches.
A stock may move down if player fails to perform considerably over a period of time. An injury, getting dropped by the selectors, loss of captaincy etc. may result in stock losing value in the market.
Since 2002 – 03, 22 teams have played in the Elite group matches. Teams may move from Plate to Elite or vice versa for better performance or otherwise.
Virtual Cricket IPO's
If the teams are to be listed as stocks at the Virtual India Cricket Stock Exchange, these need to come out with IPO’s. In the real stock market, when we analyze IPO’s, we focus primarily on their business profile, assets and liabilities, earnings, book value etc. to decide whether it is worth investing in the IPO. However, after the shares are listed, they may perform differently. Please read more about this in my previous article, “How do IPO’s fare in Secondary Market?”. In case of India domestic teams, we can analyze the teams based on the performance in the Ranji Trophy matches.
The following points table shows the performance of the Elite group teams.
The criteria here is that teams should have played in all the five years, starting
2002 – 03. This leads to ten teams which have played in all the seasons.
| Team | Points |
| Mumbai | 89 |
| Baroda | 63 |
| Hyderabad | 59 |
| Tamil Nadu | 57 |
| Punjab | 53 |
| Bengal | 49 |
| Delhi | 46 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 44 |
| Andhra | 37 |
| Gujarat | 37 |
It is important to note here that Mumbai, the commercial capital and stock market powerhouse, leads the list. Gujarat, which has a reasonable investor population ranks last.
As discussed earlier, Mumbai has produced some outstanding past and present cricketers like Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar. India’s current pace attack consists of Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan. Both the cricketers represent Baroda. Hyderabad’s Vangipurappu Venkata Sai Laxman (VVS Laxman, described by many cricket commentators as Very Very Special Laxman) made an unbelievable 281 against Australia at Kolkata in March 2001 after India had to follow on. The match was won by India, thus becoming only the second team to register a victory after following on. (Follow on means falling short of opponents first innings total by more than 200 runs in case of a five day Test match. The team that falls short needs to bat once again.) England is the other team that defeated Australia on two occasions, in 1894 – 95 as well as in 1981. Tamil Nadu’s Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan was the Indian captain for the first two World Cups – both in England in 1975 and 1979. Popularly known as ‘Venkat’ he served as a cricket administrtator, match referee and an International umpire till 2004.
Missing in the list is Karnataka which was not part of Elite group in 2002 – 03 season. It has also produced some outstanding cricketers like Gundappa Vishwanath who was known for his ‘square cut’ shot, Rahul Dravid or ‘The Wall’ who played some wonderful innings when his country needed them at critical times. Javagal Srinath was the most successful Indian fast bowler after Kapil Dev, also from Karnataka. Punjab’s cricketers include Navjot Sidhu, Harbhajan Singh (who took the first ever Test hat-trick by an Indian in the Kolkata Test match against Australia) and Yuvraj Singh who hit six 6’s in a Twenty 20 interntaional recently in South Africa.
The Virtual Cricket Stock Exchange Winner
If the above mentioned teams are listed in the Virtual India Cricket Stock Exchange, there is no doubt that Mumbai will be the one that is likely to outperform others.
Sundaramurthy Vadivelu
