The indications of an evident rebuff were seen when Pakistan T20 captain Shahid Afridi went under the hammer to start the auction. Shahid Afridi is one the worlds most wanted players, but no franchise was ready to add him up.  Richard Madley banged his gavel and moved on for other names as no bids were coming for Afridi. Shahid Afridi later claimed that IPL had made fun of Pakistani cricketers. Afridi said, “I feel bad for Indian fans, which are going to miss me playing cricket in IPL this year.”

The silence inside the Trident Hotel spoke a million words of a full scale political war. It seems that IPL has made fun of Pakistan by treating them this way. Pakistanis are World T20 champions and the attitude franchise owners opted was disappointing.

Sohail Tanveer became the second victim. He was the leading wicket taker during the first edition of IPL in 2008. When his name was announced by the auctioneer, the silence continued from franchisers. Tanveer was disappointed with the auction because some franchises had shown interest in singing him in the weeks leading up the auction. Tanveer said that if franchisers don’t want us playing in IPL then they should be clear about it in the first place. He later added, “They mean to say none of our players are good enough to be in IPL”.

The decision taken by franchises is based on political grounds rather than cricketing sense. They should be ashamed as they have hurt image of cricket as sport. At first, Indians made the fuss about visa clearance and then the security issues were raised. The IPL commissioner Lalit Kumar Modi is trying to deflect attention away from this issue. He claims that each team was having their own strategy during the auction. The key factor involved in the auction was availability of the players. The franchise owners have also agreed with Modi that the decision to snub Pakistani players was based on availability for the entire IPL season.

The players like Afridi, Tanveer, Razzaq and Gul are still available during the IPL. They have no international or other domestic commitments; even then they were left unsold. Preity Zinta, owner of Kings XI Punjab, also claimed that availability of players was the only decision making factor during the auction. Any how, the current situation after the auction still portrays that some biasness was shown during the auction.

After enjoying two successful editions of IPL, Lalit Modi is going to face a tough situation this year as he has to face the obligations from PCB and Pakistani players. Whatever is claimed by Lalit Modi and franchise owners, one thing is for sure that IPL can no more claim to be the best cricket league in the world.

If players like Muhammad Kaif and Damien Martyn are purchased on basis of their T20 performance then how it could be possible to leave the entire team of World T20 Champions unsold? The Indians are still unable to answer this question.

The cricketing circles and fans in Pakistan still believe that the auction was completely biased and was based on political tensions between India and Pakistan. Pakistani players have high values and are the best in T20 cricket in the world.