by Kaushik Narayanan
Amidst the controversy involving CSK, the first day of the 2014 IPL Auction was a successful one, filled with surprisinly high bids, Astounishingly low bids for value players, and many match winners being unsold. Here are the top highlights of the first day of the Auction.
Mumbai Indians bags Anderson, M Hussey : Having retained the full quota of 5 players, MI’s budget allocation was severly dimilished. Nevertheless, some intelligent auctioning (they did not bid for the most part of the Auction before lunch) enabled them to bag the big cherries of Mike Hussey and on-fire Kiwi, Corey Anderson. The interesting fact was that even though RR, DD and KXIP had 15+ crores in their kitty, they never made serious bid on a potential match-winning all-rounder, who was sold for a merely ₹4,50,00,000. MI’s other buys include Zaheer Khan, P Ojha(using the buy-back card) and Aussie Allrounder Hazlewood.
SRH buy destructive Aussie pair of Warner and Finch : SRH having retained Steyn and Dhawan, strengthened their batting by buying the Australian T20I openers, David Warner and Aaron Finch. Their combined value was just below 10 Crore Rupees, which makes it a very profitable buy. Other top buys for SRH include Irfan Pathan, Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma, Moises Henriques.
Delhi Daredevil spend a whopping 17 crore on TN duo, Dinesh Karthick and M Vijay, Bag KP back : DD, who retained none of their players, went on a rampage by buying the TN batsmen D Karthick for 12.5 Crore Rupees, and spent a 5 more on bagging former CSK opener M Vijay. KP, who recently retired from International cricket, was bought by SRH for 9 crores, before DD used the buy back card to rebuy him. Other quality buys include on-form Q De Kock, Mohmd Shami, Nathan Coulter-Nile.
KKR strenghten their bowling reserves : Already having retained S Narine and G Gambhir, KKR strengthen their batting and bowling order by buying Umesh Yadav, Morne Morkel, Vinay Kumar and Piyush Chawla. While Bangla Allrounder Sakib Ul Hassan was rebought by KKR, they used their right-to-buy-back card to snatch Jacques Kallis from the hands of CSK.
RCB spend a fortune on Yuvi; bag Stark, Rampaul and Muralidharan : Rajasthan and RCB furiously bid for Yuvi. Just when he was nearly bought for 10 Crores, KKR entered the race, raised the bar to 14 Crore rupees, the most expensive player this year. The other buys were more of a budget buys, as they bagged Rampaul and Murali pretty cheaply. Aussie left arm fast Stark’s inclusion will bring variation to the bowling attack.
KXIP sets the Auction on fire : Benefitted with a huge kitty, KXIP made most of it, as they were the most influencial buyers this season. Having bagged Sehwag initially, KXIP were successful in buying former MI teammates Glenn Maxwell and Mitchell Johnson, and everyone knows in what form the latter is in. Other quality buys include that of L Balaji, Che Pujara, Tesera Perera, and George Bailey.
Chennai Super Kings relatively quiet : CSK, who usually ends up shedding most of the money, were relatively quiet today. But nevertheless, some quality money was spent in buying the likes of Brendum McCullum, Ashish Nehra, Ben Hilfenhaus and Mohit Sharma.
RR spends the least, as expected : RR, mentored by none other than Rahul Dravid himself, as usual decided to rely on the local players, after buying just 6 players in the auction, with most money spent on Steven Smith ( 4 Crore Rupees). Buying on in-form Kane Williamson and Aussie Veteran Brad Hodge makes this a reasonable outing for the RR. As usual, expect lots of un-known names on their playing 11.
Lots of money was spent on the first day, but many were left unsold. Some of the most prominent names are Ross Taylor, Nathan McCullum, Mahela Jayawardene, Brad Hogg and many more. Sri Lankans had a very hard time finding buyers as even their captain A Mathews was left unsold.
Now coming into the second day, KXIP still has about 15 Crore Rupees. Expect them to bag a few more quality players. Whereas other teams will look to fill in the teams with some good buys. One can anticipate an exciting second day.
by Kaushik Narayanan.
(Kaushik’s blog – The Straight Drive )
