Airtel abandons Tendulkar

By John Cheeran
Cricket writers love to throw statistics at their readers but dread to look at truth.
But corporate India is hardly swayed by fealty to politics, or sport of politics and often is forced to make unsentimental decisions.
In contemporary sport, a player's net worth is determined and undermined by his sponsors.
Sensing the reality out there much better than the avowed cricke pundits, telecom major Bharti Airtel has dumped Sachin Tendulkar as its brand ambassador.
Reports point out that Airtel was paying Tendulkar Rs 4 crore each year since 2004.
Never a charismatic cricketer, Tendulkar's brand value always was measured in terms of the runs he scored.
There is an alarming dip in the run curve and one of the reasons for that was Tendulkar's recurring tennis elbow.
Any company who would like to gaze into the future will have to now look beyond Tendulkar. Emergence of Mahendra Singh Dhoni as a youth icon also has added to the shifting brand value equations.
In May 2006, Saatchi and Saatchi's new division Iconix had signed up Tendulkar for a Rs 180 crore. It was a move that raised a few eyebrows. Even at that time Tendulkar's stock was tumbling.
When Airtel struck its deal with Tendulkar in 2004, the PR spin had said that the telecom company and the cricketer shared the same brand values-- reliable, trustworthy and leaders in their fields of work.
Are these assumptions being challenged now?
Airtel's mood is also reflected in the World XIs announced by ICC.
Tendulkar does not find a place both in one-day team and Test team.