Shane Warne's midas touch to minnows Rajasthan Royals in the inaugural IPL season may be a part of cricketing folklore but a new book reveals that the Australian spin legend was not the original choice for captaincy.
In their book IPL - an inside story, Alam Srinivas and T R Vivek say Jaipur owner Manoj Badale was "saddled with Warne" by chance in the first players' auction.
"In fact, Warne was never the over-riding original choice for the captaincy of the Jaipur team. Badale made it clear during an exclusive e-mail interview with us. 'Warne's views could only be factored in after the first (players') auction and it is clear given the choice of Graeme Smith, that we did not build a team around Warne. But rather we picked a team based on individual roles and records'".
The book gave an eyewitness version, by a franchise CEO, of the first auction where Jaipur just happened to buy Warne because no one else was buying him and the auction appeared to be in disaster.
"Warne's was the first name that came up as the 78 players' names were picked up. But no one was willing to pick him up at the reserve price. The auction was headed for disaster within the first few minutes.
"Since (Lalit) Modi has some interest in the Jaipur team he made an eye contact with Badale and Co. and nudged them to start bidding. Jaipur raised the placard... hoping other teams would jump into the fray... But no other team bid for Warne. Jaipur, it seemed, was saddle with Warne."
The authors also wrote that the legendary spinner was "not a strategist" but someone who can just goad people to give 100 per cent on the field.
They said Warne was an "insecure" person who feels "compelled to be liked by others" and is greedy for praise. "...It is his ability to earn respect and love of his teammates. Warne can goad people to give 100 per cent on the field," the authors wrote.
"Excuse me, you would say, but isn't that what captaincy is all about? Isn't that how Ganguly and Ponting became great captains?... please read our words carefully. We never said that Warne is not a good leader. All we said was that he is not a strategist," they argued.
"Even his trait to extract the best out of his players, to make them die rather than fail only proves it," they added. The book also attempted to justify their point with Warne's coach Terry Jenner's view on the bowler's behaviour.
"He (Jenner) could see something else too, behind the bravado, that many people missed, and this was the insecurity that is so obvious in Warne today. He desperately wanted people to like him, to praise him, to say how good he was," the book quoted from Paul Barry's biography on Warne.
"Warne will only listen to people that he thinks can help him go somewhere. He shies away from control, authority or demands for rational behaviour. In its extreme form this syndrome is a mental illness called narcissistic personality disorder; Warne appears to be suffering from milder version," the book added from Warne's biography.
The authors observed: "Therefore, throughout the IPL, one witnessed this twin emotions in Warne's captaincy. He went out of his way to be loved by his teammates and rejected anything that did not fit his scheme of things."
