Before the Indian Premier League began, I raved about the accountability it would bring into Indian cricket. For years we raged against how the BCCI wasn't accountable to anyone, and how its incentives were all wrong. In my view, the IPL changed all that. In the last couple of weeks, though, I have had many readers writing in and asking me if accountability isn't overrated when people like Vijay Mallya go around running down their team.

Some of the IPL franchise owners are having a tough time figuring out the game. Vijay Mallya, dissapointed by his team's bad start to the tournament, sacked its CEO, Charu Sharma. He then spoke out against the team management, blaming Rahul Dravid for having picked the wrong players. All this could hardly be good for morale. Weren't his efforts at holding these employees accountable counterproductive, my readers asked me.

It isn't just Mallya. Rohit Mahajan of Outlook quoted a Delhi Daredevils players as saying: "[T]hese corporate people attend meetings, and fools among them even try to tell players and coaches how to play." Sharda Ugra of India Today quoted an India player as saying: "The franchises are being obnoxious. We wouldn't dream of telling them how to run their businesses. The last thing you need is them telling you how to play cricket." So is this the accountability I spoke of with such optimism?

No.

What the IPL setup guarantees is that it isn't just Vijay Mallya's players who are accountable to him - Mallya himself is accountable to the market. If Mallya manages his team badly, it will perform badly, and his franchise's bottomline will take a hit. Had Charu Sharma been in the wrong, he would have been held accountable by Mallya, point proved. But if the poor man was blameless, then Mallya will be held accountable by market forces.

The IPL is not just a competition between cricketers. It is also a competition between management styles. Contrast Bangalore and Mumbai, for example. Both had a similarly bad start to the tournament - if anything, Mumbai's was worse, what with their acting captain, Harbhajan Singh, involved in Slapgate. But the management of both teams handled it differently.

Mallya used the whip, trying to bring about what some newspapers bizarrely called "corporate-style accountability". (How many corporates can you name that would sack someone on the basis of a week's results?) Mukesh Ambani, on the other hand, kept faith in his side and gave them space. As Lalchand Rajput, their coach, told Outlook: "Even after four defeats, we were not put under pressure. Even I was a bit surprised by this, but they only said as long as you put in your best efforts, it is fine."

See the difference in results. Isn't it obvious that Mallya is already being held accountable for his mistakes? Isn't the brand value of his side slipping and sliding even further because of his public tantrums? And when he tries to hire top players or a much-wanted captain for the next season, do you think they will choose to work for him if equivalent offers exist from other franchises?

This sure seems like accountability to me. It is a refreshing change from the running of the BCCI, where there was never a mechanism to punish bad management. But there is such a mechanism for the IPL - it's called the market.

The role of luck

I have a provocative theory about the IPL that I'm not sure I believe in myself, but I had fun thinking about it, so let me share it with you. My theory is that luck is the biggest factor in determining the results of this year's IPL.

Whoa, you go, hold on there. Cricket is a game of skill, and the league table shows that the teams are getting vastly different results. What do you mean it's almost entirely about luck?

Well, the spread of teams on the league table proves nothing. I asked a friend of mine, Deepak Shenoy, to create a program in Excel that replicates the IPL, with just one condition: every result is determined by the toss of a coin. Every time we run this program, we get a league table pretty similar to the IPL league table: some teams have impressive winning streaks, others lose a few in a row and hide at the bottom.

Such a simulation proves nothing, of course, but illustrates that sheer luck can give us the sort of league table we see now. So why do I think luck matters?

There are two conditions I think the IPL meets that gives luck a big role. One, talent is more or less evenly distributed across the teams. They all have a similar number of overseas stars, a big hitter or two up the order, a stingy bowler or two, and so on. The teams are more or less equally balanced.

Two, the short format of the game means that a stroke of luck has a far greater impact here than in a Test match or a one-dayer. An overthrow that goes for four, a catch that doesn't stick, a missed run-out: all these can play a decisive role in a match. In a one-dayer, a team has time to make up for them. But they play a much bigger role in T20 cricket, especially in the kind of close games we've seen in the IPL.

It is not my case that players performing well are lucky. I quite believe in the old saw that good players make their own luck. (This is only true over the long term, of course.) But from a team's perspective, you could do everything right in terms of selection and management and still lose. Your players may not click on the day; a decision could go against you; your best bowler could be inside-edged for four twice in a row. Shit happens.

So maybe Mallya shouldn't complain. Instead, he should start planning for next year, when one of my two conditions for a luck-filled IPL (both are necessary) disappears. The teams will no longer have spending limits imposed on them, which means that talent will no longer be evenly spread out between them. That will give Mallya a chance to put together a team with so much skill that the role of luck is minimised.

But will those players want to join him?

Amit Varma writes the blog India Uncut.