The Reliance Industries-owned Mumbai franchisee had gone to last month’s IPL players auction armed with a strategy and wish-list outlined by master batsman Sachin Tendulkar and executed them to a large extent, according to the chief representative of the franchisee.

The President and Chief Marketing Officer of Reliance Retail Limited, R Balachandran said he would give a figure of 8 on a 1-10 scale about the outcome of the February 20 auction in which they trained their focus on roping in match-winning players.

“We went into the auction with a fairly clear idea of what we wanted. He (Tendulkar) thinks cricket from many angles and thinks continuously. We had a lot of dialogue. He had a wish-list and there was a strategy behind the players that we went out to pick and the players we got. We executed that strategy.

“He sought specific players. If you look at the players you will see we have selected people who by themselves are match-winners. That’s a very important aspect.

“Yes, we came out a happy lot. If you put it in a scale of 1-10, I would say it probably would be around 8″, said Balachandran, who headed the Mumbai franchisee team at the auction held here.

“I believe its not just possession but a question of choosing match winners. This is what is behind a good amount of our strategy. I know Sachin’s mind has worked on all this a lot”, he elaborated.

Another major factor influencing their choice of players was their availability in the first year of the April 18-June 1 League, Balachandran said.

“All the players we have picked up at the auction are 100 per cent available this year. That’s very important. We did not necessarily go into the auction to choose the entire team which could not have been done as per the rules of the auction.

“What we did was to pick the core of the team in which Sachin is the nucleus, as the icon player not only as a batsman and a vastly experienced captain but also as a thinking cricketer,” he said.

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