'Just get into a suit and come' - two unusual days in the life of Charu Sharma

Charu Sharma was wrapping up lunch - he hadn't gotten to dessert yet - between 2pm and 3pm on February 12, Saturday when he got a call from Brijesh Patel, the IPL governing council chairman. The conversation went somewhat like this:

"Charu, where are you?"
"Where am I? I'm home."

"Oh, you're home. Good. What are you doing?"
"Having lunch with my family."

"Can you come to the ITC Gardenia?"
"If you like, yes, sure. When?"

"Now!"
"Now??!!"

"Yes, you know our auctioneer has unfortunately had a major accident."
"Oh my god!"

"We've taken him to the hospital. Can you come now?"
"Give me a few minutes to change."

Sharma had to make a hasty apology to his extended family - his wife's sister and her family were visiting from Mumbai - at the lunch table, and an even hastier journey to the Gardenia, the hotel where the IPL 2022 mega auction had been dramatically paused two hours into the first day after Hugh Edmeades took ill, collapsing on the rostrum because of "postural hypotension", which happens if the blood pressure drops when one goes from lying down to sitting up, or from sitting to standing.

Familiar to cricket viewers as a television presenter and commentator, Sharma has also been an auctioneer. He was the right man, with the right skill sets, and importantly, at the right place. In Bengaluru, the right place is essential, as anyone who has watched seasons change while waiting at the Silk Board traffic signal can attest to. Sharma lives roughly a ten-minute distance from the hotel.

On that Saturday, not being associated with the IPL in any professional capacity, Sharma wasn't following the auction on television. He knew it was taking place, but that was about it. Ordinarily, he might not even have been home on a Saturday afternoon. He usually plays golf then.

The story of how the IPL 2022 auction didn't get derailed when Edmeades collapsed, begins four months ago in October 2021, during the Everest Premier League played in Kathmandu, Nepal. A tournament that didn't feature a single player who would go on to get picked up at the IPL 2022 auction ended up being the saviour.

"I was there about four months ago in early October, and I was going with some friends late at night and I took a toss and hurt my shoulder really badly. It's torn in a couple of places," Sharma tells ESPNcricinfo. "I'm getting it looked at, it's still not ready yet. But if it were ready, I would have been on the golf course on a Saturday afternoon, playing a round of golf with my phone tucked away not to be looked at! But I wasn't. I was home."

The injury is serious enough that Sharma has taken to playing tennis left-handed. It's much more difficult to play golf left-handed.

Sharma had no accreditation. He was an outsider to the bubble that the hotel had established, where everyone connected with the auction had routes and zones mapped out for where they could go.

The accreditation issue was the least of his worries. "I rang up Brijesh when I was a minute away and he said he's sending someone down to come fetch me up," Sharma recounts. "I met two or three key people, one was of course Hemang Amin, the CEO of the BCCI and also the IPL COO. Brijesh of course was there."

But while working against a ticking clock, he had forgotten an important piece of equipment back home. It was when meeting the television producer, "an old friend", that Sharma remembered he had left behind his earpiece - through which producers speak to anchors on live TV to direct the broadcast.

"I had forgotten my earpiece at home, because I just ran. Of course they could give me an earpiece but one of the small tools of the trade is to have your own moulded earpiece," Sharma says. "I've had mine ever since I started out in Prime Sports in 1994-95, so it's like a 27-year-old relic. But it's my moulded earpiece. It's made to your ear, custom-built. So I quickly rang up my wife, and she said, 'As usual you have forgotten something, haven't you?' I said I had, and I told her where the earpiece was and she sent it over. It got there in time, just before the telecast, took about ten minutes to come. I had about 20 minutes from the time I entered Gardenia to going into the auction room."

Sharma's entry was an inevitable bubble breach, but as breaches go, it was probably the safest one the organisers could have asked for. Not only was he triple vaccinated - he had taken his booster shot "some time back" - but he had also got a negative RT-PCR test that very week.

"Well… they had to take a risk," Sharma smiles. "But I'd just come back from Pune, where I was doing the ATP Tour's Tata Open, the only major tennis event that happens in India on the ATP tour [from January 30 to February 6]. And I had to get an RT-PCR to come back to Karnataka. So I was pretty recently tested.

"But they (the IPL organisers) also did an RT-PCR test. A lady came in a hazmat suit and said, 'RT-PCR'. I said, 'Okay, fair enough'. So they did take precautions. The results would be coming later, but I wasn't hobnobbing with too many people, who were sitting on the tables. And I didn't have symptoms, plus I was recently tested… and I am triple vaccinated."

Once Sharma had his earpiece and had been provided with an auctioneer's booklet, which had details of who was up next, the groups, who would be picking the players' names and more "basic pieces of information", he was all set. The IPL organisers were willing to give him more time if he wanted. He didn't.

"I don't mean to overemphasise this, but the focus really is on the players. Which team are they going to, at what price. The drama of the auction is there," Sharma says. "The auctioneer is just a sutradhar (narrator), just channelling all this together. The auctioneer… I don't know how people will take this, but there's a very minimal level of skill involved. It's a system-led thing. You just have to be careful about how much of your personality you infuse in that system. You can't be too strict, too wild, too funny… too anything. That middle line is important."

Because of his work in cricket and other sports, Sharma was familiar with several people in the auction room at the bidding tables, but greetings were brief, though cordial, and he entered the room focussing more on the job at hand. When the bidding for the first day ended, Sharma still didn't know whether he would be needed on Sunday, February 13, or whether Edmeades would be well enough to resume.

"It wasn't my call at all. I wasn't asking any leading questions of what about tomorrow," Sharma says. "But they were kind enough to say that, 'frankly, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow; we believe he's much better now'. Hemang did tell me that at this point of time he couldn't tell me for sure, but he would call me by 9am the next morning. And both Brijesh and Hemang did call. They asked me to reach by 11, we could have a session to plan for the second day, which was more complicated because there were more categories. Day 1 was all the big names.

"So I went there and they told me, 'this is the situation, we feel that you begin and take it forward as much as you can - if he [Edmeades] feels up to it and we are happy with the situation, we'll bring him right at the end, and you can hand it over and let him finish'."

Edmeades eventually did make it back at the end of Day 2 for the last lot. Both men received a standing ovation from everyone in the hall - Edmeades for coming back fully recovered from a fall that looked scary, and Sharma for having taken up the baton of IPL auctioneer so seamlessly. The only minor sour note was facing some irritation from a franchise representative or two, who suggested Sharma could have closed some bids quicker instead of giving the room the chance to continue bidding.

"Frankly, there's no timer," Sharma says. "You have to use your judgment. And your judgment is based on the interest you're seeing. I did prod, more gently than otherwise, because you have to move along. But the essential part is, can you be just and fair to all? And I hope I was that. Nobody was given more than anybody else in terms of time.

"They [the franchises] all want the hammer down. But I can't be biased. One of the criteria for an auctioneer is extreme neutrality. But I'm human, so if there is excess irritation coming from one table, I do feel, 'I don't deserve this, and you guys should know better'. Let's not bully people who are taking the whole project forward. So there's a certain reciprocal irritation, but I can't let it show. That would be unprofessional.

"You kind of try and laugh it off internally. If someone is being immature, or in some way unprofessional, or not going with the flow appropriately, I can't respond. I really shouldn't, and I never have. So why do that now?"

Was any residual irritation left by the end of it? "I don't know about them, but not me. Some of them were very, very nice. They came up and expressed their happiness and gratitude. The one or two people who didn't come up, didn't come up."

What Sharma took from the two-day experience, though, was some wonderment and a feeling of appreciation.

"I've been doing big-time television since donkey's years, so I was wondering 'what's different here?' Most of the comments were very congratulatory and positive, which was very nice of people. Must have done something right! But for me, it was just about what I do. I am just glad I was at hand and thankful. I'd like to thank everybody who I haven't been able to, through your medium. I was a little overwhelmed. Never got this kind of outpouring. Maybe the times have changed. I'm grateful for that outpouring."

When asked what happened after Day 1 ended, Sharma laughed and said, "Extreme fatigue!"

But he did get a sense that the manner in which he had stepped in and conducted the auctions had been received very positively.

"I hadn't touched my phone, I had left it with one of the staff. I go back home and there is a fair deluge of messages. I said, 'Oh my god, what happened here!' And the family said, 'Okay, now we know what you ran off for, and we forgive you'."

So the television at home did get tuned in to the IPL auction finally?

Sharma smiles. "Yes, it did."