New Delhi, May 25: Two weeks after TOI started its Most Valuable Player Index for the IPL, Adam Gilchrist has dropped out of the top 10 for the first time and M S Dhoni, who had forced his way into that elite list last week has also had to yield place. Yuvraj Singh and Irfan Pathan are back, while Dwayne Bravo's match-winning act for Mumbai Indians put him also into the top bracket.

Shaun Marsh, meanwhile, has consolidated his lead at the top of the value-for-money index with Balaji far behind him at No 2, but well ahead of third placed team-mate Manpreet Gony. These calculations have been done taking into account performances in all matches up to Friday's victory of Mohali over Hyderabad.

There's been a considerable reshuffle at the top of the MVP list. Though Shane Watson stays at No.1, his captain Shane Warne has now moved up to the second spot. Interestingly, it is now Mumbai and not Jaipur that has three players in the top 10 - Sanath Jayasuriya in fourth place, Shaun Pollock in eighth and Bravo at the tail end. Delhi and Mohali have two each and Hyderabad a lone presence in Rohit Sharma at the top. The fact that Chennai has none - M S Dhoni is their highest ranked player at No. 12 and the only one in the top 20 - seems to suggest that the Super Kings have got to where they have through more of a team effort than others similarly placed in the league.

The fact that Bangalore does not have even a single player in the top 20 indicates that none of its players has been able to perform consistently. Captain Rahul Dravid has come closest to doing so and is ranked No. 11 among the batsmen, but the team's dismal performance means that he loses a lot of captaincy points.

Shaun Marsh is now among the top five batsmen, which is not surprising considering his amazing consistency with the bat. In fact, if we looked at batting points per match played, Marsh would be well ahead of Gautam Gambhir (who heads the batsmen's list), Sehwag or Jayasuriya.

As for the bowlers, despite having played only seven matches till Friday, Sohail Tanvir has moved to the top, ahead of Glenn McGrath, Irfan Pathan, S Sreesanth and Warne. Another man making waves in the bowling is Sri Lankan Farveez Maharoof who is at No. 10 and climbing, despite having played only 8 matches.

In addition to the regular comparisons we have been doing over the last two weeks, we also decided to take a look at how the captains compare in terms of points and value-for-money. The results are quite interesting.

It turns out that Warne, Sehwag, Yuvraj and Pollock head the list of captains, with Dravid, Tendulkar, Harbhajan and Laxman bringing up the rear and Dhoni, Gilchrist and Ganguly sandwiched in the middle.

However, remember that Harbhajan, Tendulkar and Laxman, for different reasons, have played very few matches. So what happens if we compare them on the basis of points per match played? Warne, Pollock, Sehwag and Yuvraj now become the top four, Gilchrist, Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman the bottom four and Harbhajan has Dhoni and Tendulkar for company in the middle of the list.

Clearly, the success or failure of the teams they lead is playing a major role in this ranking. So what happens if we discount captaincy points and look only at their performances as players? Harbhajan jumps to the top of the list, Sehwag stays at second spot, followed by Pollock and Gilchrist. The bottom end consists of Ganguly, Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman.

The fact that Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman still remain fairly low on the list indicates that it is not just a case of their rankings suffering because of their teams doing badly. In fact, their teams may have done badly because the captain didn't do too well.

Finally, what if we look at the VFM index of the captains? Here we include captaincy points, which seems fair since a good part of their fees must in the franchisees' minds be because of their leadership abilities.

The list becomes dramatically different from any of the earlier versions. Warne is way ahead of anybody else at the top, which is not surprising given the fact that he not only has accumulated more points than any of the others, but also gets paid much less, with the lone exception of Laxman.

In second spot now is Pollock, followed by Sehwag and Gilchrist in that order. The bottom four on the list now become Laxman, Dhoni, Ganguly and Dravid, with the Bangalore captain's VFM score being less than one-eighth of Warne's. Even Dhoni's is barely one-fifth of the Aussie who has led Jaipur to the top of the league tables.

What does all of this imply? We have said it in the past, but it bears repetition. The inaugural IPL saw huge sums of money being splurged on a few stars and relatively small amounts (though still beyond anything anybody could have imagined pre-IPL) on buying up the lesser known workmen who would make up the team.

If you are a betting man, don't bet on the same thing happening next time. Franchisees ought to have learnt that while established stars may more often than not perform better than up and coming youngsters, the gap between the two is nowhere near as huge as the differentials in the bids would suggest. Will that mean the stars get more conservative amounts when the chance to bid for them next comes up? Or will it mean that even journeymen can count on getting bigger bucks? Your guess is as good as ours.