Who will win Saurav's willow online

Who will win Saurav's willow online
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

December 15: The bat with which Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly had scored a record breaking 183 runs against Sri Lanka during the 1999 World Cup is up for an online auction at a sports website.

Registered members of ClickCricket.com are currently bidding for the willow. The highest bid so far is by a member called `Gaurav' who has laid a stake for the bat at Rs 50,000.

The bidding will officially close on December 20, at 5 pm, and the bat will be given away to the highest bidder in this auction on the Net.

A spokesperson for ClickCricket told Mumbai Newsline that this is the second sports related auction on the site. ``Earlier on December 5, the T-shirt of Sri Lankan pace bowler, Muttiah Muralidharan, was auctioned online for Rs 21,500. But we are receiving many more bids for Saurav's famous bat,'' said the spokesperson.

Saurav Ganguly had scored the ton at Taunton during the World Cup cricket in May, last year.

However, on the flip side, while a lot of people are bidding for the bat, there is no guarantee that they are for real. In fact one of the biggest risks of online auctions is the fake bidding by pranksters online. ``There may be fake biddings during the auction, but the bat will only be sold to the genuine customer,'' reasoned an IT professional.

One such victim of online auctions is a Mumbai based businessman, S Jathar, who deals in diamonds and other precious stones and gems. ``I had registered some precious stones for an online auction in a P2P (person-to-person) website. However, though a person bid for the same, nobody eventually turned up to buy the gems that I wanted to sell,'' informed Jathar.