On his impending return to the IPL after 8 years, Mitchell Starc has made the biggest-ever splash in IPL history as he was bought by the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for an insane sum of INR 24.75 crore in the IPL 2024 auction.
About 90 minutes after his Australian teammate and captain, Pat Cummins, had become the most expensive player in the IPL, breaking Sam Curran’s INR 18.5 crore record from the last auction and became the first player to break the INR 20 crore marker as SRH bought him for INR 20.5 crore, Mitchell Starc rocked up and straightaway there was a fierce bidding war between multiple franchises, culminating in KKR buying him for a whopping INR 24.75 crore.
After Mitchell Starc’s name was announced, Rishabh Pant at the Delhi Capitals table and Akash Ambani at the Mumbai Indians table were at each other straight away. Their bidding continued till 9.8 crore when Gautam Gambhir’s KKR and Ashish Nehra’s Gujarat Titans entered the fray and took it to over 20 crore. Neither Gambhir nor Nehra relented in their determination to buy Starc. But in the end, it was Gautam Gambhir and KKR who managed to secure Starc’s services at a hefty price of INR 24.75 crore.
Starc was also bought by KKR in the IPL 2018 auction, but he had pulled out of the IPL 2018 tournament due to an injury. Starc last played in the IPL in the 2014 and 2015 seasons for RCB.
Twitter flooded with memes as KKR bought Mitchell Starc for INR 24.75 crore:
Kolkata Knight Riders – Purse available: INR 6.95 Crore
Current squad: Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Sunil Narine, Jason Roy. Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Andre Russell, Venkatesh Iyer, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakravarthy, KS Bharat, Chetan Sakariya, Mitchell Starc
Players released – Shakib Al Hasan, Litton Das, David Wiese, Arya Desai, N Jagadeesan, Mandeep Singh, Kulwant Khejroliya, Shardul Thakur, Lockie Ferguson, Umesh Yadav, Tim Southee, Johnson Charles
Bought: KS Bharat (50 L), Chetan Sakariya (50 L), Mitchell Starc (24.75 Cr)
