Mallya hunts for winning formula for Bangalore Royal Challengers

NEW DELHI: Vijay Mallya loves collecting antiques. In 2003, in what he trumpeted as an act of restoring Kannada pride, Mallya secretly bid for and won the ownership of Tipu Sultan���s 42-inch sword forking out Rs 1.5 crore at a London auction.

At another auction table, this time at Mumbai���s Hilton Towers earlier this year, his abiding love for antiques was on display as he went about expensively assembling Test cricket colossuses, and bringing some aging stars out of the woodwork for a new rapid fire format of the game (great as Dravid, Kallis and Chanderpaul may be in the longer version of the game, they struggle to make it even to their countries��� 50 overs teams, leave alone T20).

Now, as his $120 million-investment, the Bangalore Royal Challengers (BRC), languishes at the bottom of the IPL table, Mallya must surely realise antiques look good on the mantlepiece, not in the battle field.

The embarrassing failure of Royal Challengers, a team into which Mallya threw in his company United Spirits��� (USL) entire marketing might (USL top brass has been pressed into nearly full-time IPL service and have to be in attendance at all the matches ��� home and away) has led to a football style war of words and egos, despotic sackings and a potential managerial merry-go-round.

���My biggest mistake was to abstain from the selection of the team. Though I watch a lot cricket whenever possible, I am no cricket expert at the end of the day,��� says Mallya, chairman, USL, breaking his silence in the aftermath of team CEO Charu Sharma���s hasty ouster.

Speaking to SundayET from Istanbul where Mallya is stationed to oversee the progress of his other high profile sporting investment, the Formula 1 racing team Force India, he reveals that before the IPL players went under the hammer, he had an entirely different shopping list from team captain Rahul Dravid���s.

���I had a separate list of players that I wanted. But since Dravid is such an iconic player I trusted his judgment. And Charu Sharma also backed him. After seeing the final list, my friends told me it looked like a test team. But I backed both of them thinking that they advised me properly. Unfortunately in cricket, unlike in any other sport, the captain is the boss,��� says a despondent Mallya.

There were rumours about Dravid threatening to quit captaincy midway if Mallya chose to wield the axe on team coach and close friend Venkatesh Prasad. But the honorary doctorate in business administration from the University of South California, must surely know such a defence citing lack of expertise and understanding doesn���t wash in the world of business.

After all it was the same Mallya who showed little sentiment and a lot business sense in pruning UB���s disparate empire from 20 to six companies and gradually exiting non-core businesses like processed food, petrochemicals and paints and pharmaceuticals.

Charu Sharma for his part seems baffled by the way things have unfolded at BRC. ���I look at the mirror every morning and wonder why I was considered inadequate. I have no clue about why things happened this way. Mallya listened to Dravid who was responsible for choosing the team. No team is perfect, but did we get the team we wanted? No. The key players were missing at key times,��� he says.