Mallaya defends sacking Charu! Blames Dravid!

The owner of Bangalore Royal Challengers, Vijaya Mallaya has come out open and blamed skipper Dravid and defended his decision of firing the CEO Charu Sharma.

He said, both Dravid and Charu were not rejecting the players that he opted during the auction. He selected few players and both of them were scepital about those players. They wanted few players and made me take them, the frustrated owner said.

"My biggest mistake was to abstain from the selection of the team, "Mallaya has been reported as saying.

"Since Dravid is an iconic player, I trusted his judgment But after the final list my friends told me it looked like a Test team. But I bakced both of them thinking that they advised me properly. Unfortunately in cricket, unlike any other sport, the captain is the boss," stated Mallya.

He further added that, "at the end of the day, people need to understand that the IPL has a corporate side to it, and a very definitive corporate side. It is not at all cricket in the traditional sense."

The trouble started in the second auction. "When Rahul Dravid was not present in the second auction, I wanted to acquire some players but Charu Sharma was very tentative about them. I mean I bought Misbah-ul-Haq because I was determinded to do it. There were other players I was discouarged about," Mallya said.

In the first acton too, attended by all three-Mallya, Charu Sharma and Dravid, few players were not picked as per owner's wish. "I was very tempted to bid for players whom I wanted but they held me back."

On Charu Sharma's sacking, Mallya said, "He was appointed CEO because I thought he understood cricket and he would add value to the team and the entire Royal Challengers initiative. But when I was questioning the performance of the team, all I was told was that practice facilities are bad, then I was told there was no bonding in the team...so everything was balmed on a particular event or lack of infrastructure."

Once the failure hits the team, the differences of opinion and the gap in the team comes out open. This is anothe example where the owner has come out open lashing out at the skipper and former CEO. The new CEO is Brijesh Patel.