The IPL 2022 mega-auction is at the weekend and the fans are excited about this event; the 2022 mega auction may be the last mega-auction in the IPL for a long time.
Over the past 14 auctions, there have been many picks that fans still talk about – some of those big buys paid off while mostly the players who were bought with hefty money have disappointed.
Here we look at 5 of the most shocking buys made by franchises in IPL auction:
Tymal Mills- INR 12 crore
RCB shelled out a whopping 12 crore for England pacer Tymal Mills at the IPL 2017 auction. Having given up red-ball cricket, Mills had made his reputation as a white-ball specialist. However, till the time of the auction Mills had featured in only 4 T20Is for England and had taken 3 wickets.
He had a poor season for RCB, picking up 5 wickets in 5 matches while leaking runs at 8.58 per over. He has never been bought by any team in the IPL since then.
Jaydev Unadkat- INR 11.5 crore
Rajasthan Royals broke the bank for Jaydev Unadkat at the 2018 IPL auction, splurging out 11.5 crore for the left-arm seamer after being impressed by his performances in the 2017 season.
Despite Unadkar’s notable performances in 2017, fans felt the Royals have gone above and beyond for Unadkat, who then failed to live up to the expectations – managing 11 wickets in 15 matches.
Shocking the fans further in the next auction too, RR holed out big money, 8.4 crore, for Unadkat; he took 10 wickets in 2019. RR bought the seamer again, this time for 3 crore in 2020.
Chris Morris- 16.25 crore
Rajasthan continued with their habit of spending lavishly at the auction when last year they bought Chris Morris for a record sum of 16.25 crore, making the South African the most expensive player at any IPL auction.
While RR believed that Morris’ all-round skills were worth this huge amount of money, it was surprising for fans because Morris had hardly ever been fit to plan an entire IPL season, and he hadn’t played for South Africa since mid-2019.
Morris fared decently, picking up 15 wickets with the ball, and winning RR a game with the bat – with his quickfire 36* off 18 balls versus Delhi.
Pawan Negi- 8.5 crore
Delhi (Daredevils then) burnt a hole of 8.5 crore in their purse for local boy Pawan Negi at the 2016 auction. Perhaps it was something in Negi Delhi saw that others hadn’t – Negi had picked up 7 wickets across 4 IPL seasons before that.
In 2016, the pressure of the price tag bogged him down: the left-arm spinner could pick up only 1 wicket in 8 matches!
While Varun Chakravarthy has become a renowned name now with his success at KKR in the past couple of IPL seasons, he was a rarely heard cricketer before that. Punjab had shocked the fans when they bid big for the mystery spinner in 2019 – splashing a mammoth 8.4 crore for the Tamil Nadu spinner.
Till then, Chakravarthy had played only 1 first-class match and a few List-A matches. He didn’t have a memorable time with Punjab in 2019 – he got to play a solitary game in which he managed figures of 1/35.
