Bids at the Indian Premier League?s (IPL) player auction frequently shot past the $2 million mark on Saturday, with Indian opener Gautam Gambhir turning out the top draw at a whopping $2.4 million, a bid won by Kolkata Knight Riders right at the beginning.
Three other Indian cricketers ? Yusuf Pathan, Robin Uthappa and Rohit Sharma ? were bought for above $2 million, marking a new high for the T20 cricket league whose fourth edition is slated for April 8 to May 20. The auction threw up a few surprises, with no takers for big names like former India captain Sourav Ganguly, West Indian legend Brian Lara and fellow countryman Chris Gayle.
As many as 72 out of a total of 350 players went up for bids on the opening day of the auction which will continue into Sunday. A total of over $40 million was spent on the 72 players on the first day.
The day began to a keen fight with teams spending $12 million on the first nine players in the starting round of the auction. First off the block, Gambhir notched up a bid 12 times his base price of $200,000 and the Kolkata team soon followed up with the second highest price of $2.1 million for the hard-hitting batsman Yusuf Pathan, seemingly looking for new players as against winning back earlier team members with its budget at the outer limit of $ 9 million.
?We came with an open mind with all options open. But in an auction, the dynamics dictate. It was an unfortunate flow of events,? said Venky Mysore, CEO of Kolkata Knight Riders, when asked why his team did not bid for Sourav Ganguly.
The two new teams Pune and Kochi too had a full budget, along with Kings XI Punjab while Rajasthan Royals had lowest spending limit of $3.9 million. The Sahara Group-owned Pune came up with a bid of $2.1 million for Robin Uthappa while the Mukesh Ambani-owned Mumbai Indians, which has retained four players from the previous squad, paid $2 million for Rohit Sharma to complete the top four bids. ?It’s purely demand and supply. There are 314 foreign players. If somebody like Brian Lara was Indian, he would have been picked up today,? said a spokesperson with Delhi Daredevils, when asked why players such as Brian Lara remained unsold. ?The interest in a player may also have to do with availability,? he said reasoning that players from New Zealand and South Africa besides India were mostly available through 2011 and 2012. The unsold players will again go under the hammer at the end of the auction, said Chirayu Amin, chairman, IPL Governing Council. ?I don?t think there is a loss of face. It is a competitive game, it is a reality of life one has to accept.?