Dubai: England’s star all-rounder Ben Stokes and Aussie speedster Mitchell Starc were the scene stealers among foreign cricketers while Manish Pandey and Lokesh Rahul laughed all their way to the bank on the first day of mega auction in the Indian Premier League (IPL) in Bengaluru on Saturday.
Stokes, who is still under the scanner for the charges of affray, was bought by Rajasthan Royals for a mind-boggling $1.96m while Australian pacer Starc got sold to Kolkata Knight Riders for $1.47m. Among Indian players, the two who grabbed headlines were former Knight Riders player Manish Pandey, who got sold to Hyderabad for $1.7m and Rahul, whom Kings XI Punjab went for broke to get for an identical fee.
Ravichandran Ashwin, whom Chennai Super Kings did not retain earlier, was the day’s first million dollar player after Kings XI Punjab roped him for $1.18 million.
An original pool of 1,122 players was trimmed to 578 cricketers and of these 360 were Indians, which included 62 capped and 298 uncapped and the rest were overseas players. Among the overseas players 182 were capped and 34 uncapped with two associate players.
Kings XI Punjab, co-owned by Bollywood actress Priety Zinta, Ness Wadia, Karan Paul and Mohit Burman outspent rival teams in the auction forcing former Indian opener and team director Virender Sehwag to tweet about Zinta: “Women like shopping ... she wants to buy everything. Wasn’t very disappointed as she managed to get some of the best Indian cricketers.”
The biggest surprise of the day was Twenty20’s most feared batsman Chris Gayle going unsold along with England captain Joe Root. Among other stars who went unsold include Sri Lanka pacer Lasith Malinga, New Zealand pacer Tim Southee, India’s opening bowler Ishant Sharma, Australian all-rounder James Faulkner, Indian wicketkeeper Parthiv Patel and South Africa’s opener Hashim Amla.
Two mystery spinners in Adam Zampa of South Africa and also West Indies Samuel Badree failed to attract any buyers.
Many teams used the Right to Match (RTM) card to buy back a few players. Right to Match (RTM) card is one in which a franchise will be allowed to retain a maximum of three cricketers and have the ‘right-to-match’ the price of a maximum of three players with the total number from both methods not exceeding five.
Shikhar Dhawan, Kieron Pollard, Ajinkya Rahane and Faf du Plessis were thus brought back by their respective teams using the RTM cards.
Sunrisers Hyderabad used the card to buy Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan for $1.41m.
Indian vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane was sold to Kings XI Punjab for $625,000 but Rajasthan Royals used their RTM and got him back.
Even South African pacer Kagiso Rabada was bought by Chennai Super Kings for $660, 660 but Delhi Daredevils used their RTM to get him back. Indian pacer Mohammed Shami was also bought by Sunrisers Hyderabad for $471,900 but Delhi Daredevils used their RTM to get him back.
Kerala wicketkeeper batsman earned the honour of the costliest wicketkeeper of the auction after a tough bidding for him by Mumbai and Rajasthan. In the end, he got sold to Rajasthan for $1.25m. India’s Test wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha got sold for Hyderbad for $786,500.
Shane Watson, the only player in the history of IPL to have scored 2500-plus runs and taken 50-plus wickets went to Chennai for $629,200. Chennai also strengthened their all-rounder by buying Kedhar Jadhav for $1.22m.
Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan got sold to Hyderabad for his base price of $314,600. The others who got sold for base price include India’s off spinner Harbhajan Singh to Chennai Super Kings for $314,600 and Yuvraj Singh to Punjab, also for $314,600.
Australia’s Glenn Maxwell got sold to Delhi Daredevils for $1.41m while Kolkata went for India’s Under-19 star Shubman Gill for $283,140. Kolkata also got Robin Uthappa for $1m. West Indies’ hard-hitter Carlos Brathwaite was bought by Sunrisers Hyderabad for $314,600.
Indian opener Gautam Gambhir, who was the captain of Kolkata Knight Riders got sold to Delhi Daredevils for $440,440.
