Indian middle-order batsman Shreyas Iyer was bought by Kolkata Knight Riders for Rs 12.25 crore, the highest price of the 10 marquee players to be sold first at the 2022 auction.
Iyer is likely to made captain of KKR, which also managed to get back Australian Test captain Pat Cummins for Rs 7.25 crore.
Delhi Capitals tried to retain Iyer but was outbid by the Kolkata side, which has already retained four players ahead of the auction.
The opening round of marquee stars seemed subdued as only Iyer crossed the Rs 10 crore mark. The second highest sale was that of South African fast bowler Kagiso Rabada, bought for Rs 9.25 crore by Punjab Kings.
Delhi were the most active among the ten teams at the auction, bidding for seven out of the ten players but landing only the prize catch of explosive Australian batsman David Warner for Rs 6.25.
Warner was expected to be the biggest star of the auction having been let go by Sunrisers Hyderabad, but went for a price not befitting of his stature.
Veteran Indian batsman Shikhar Dhawan was the first to go under the hammer, also taken by Punjab Kings for Rs 8.25 crore after a battle with his former team Delhi Capitals.
Rajasthan Royals was the other team that got two of the ten marquee players. Off-spinner Ravinchandran Ashwin (Rs 5 crore) and New Zealand pacer Trent Boult (Rs 8 crore) were signed by Rajastan. Mumbai Indians had tried to win back the latter but eventually gave up.
The other three marquee stars to be sold were South African batsman Faf du Plessis for Rs 7 crore to Royal Challengers Bangalore, Indian fast bowler Mohammed Shami for Rs 6.25 crore to Gujarat Titans and South African wicket-keeper batsman Quinton de Kock Rs 6.25 crore to Lucknow Super Giants.
These ten players were set aside in a marquee category that were to be sold at the start of this year's auction. They had a base price of Rs 2 crore each.
Cummins was bought for over Rs 15 crore last time and no wonder CEO Venky Mysore was very pleased with the outcome this time.
"To get back Pat Cummins at that price, we are very, very delighted. We thought he would go higher," Mysore said.
"We could not be happier getting Cummins and Shreyas in the first round itself. Heart beats a bit more properly now, we can now have some fun looking at what else is going on," the KKR CEO added.
With these purchases, the remaining purse of the teams are as follows:
Chennai Super Kings – Rs 48 crore
Delhi Capitals – Rs 41.25 crore
Gujarat Titans – Rs 45.75 crore
Kolkata Knight Riders – Rs 28.5 crore
Lucknow Super Giants – Rs 52.25 crore
Mumbai Indians – Rs 48 crore
Punjab Kings – Rs 54.5 crore
Royal Challengers Bangalore – Rs 50 crore
Rajasthan Royals – Rs 49 crore
Sunrisers Hyderabad – Rs 68 crore
The IPL auction ahead of the 2022 season is being held in Bengaluru over two days. Unlike previous editions of the auction, teams do not have the right-to-match option
While the eight existing franchises have already given the list of players retained by them, the new teams—Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants—were allowed to sign three players each before auction.
Each team has a purse of Rs 90 crore and each squad can have a maximum of eight foreign players.
Apart from the marquee players, there are 590 other players left to be auctioned, which will be done over today and tomorrow.
Among the remaining players to be auctioned, the major ones include Ishan Kishan, Yuzvendra Chahal, Deepak Chahar, Devdutt Padikkal and Bhuvneshwar Kumar among the Indians.
Jason Holder, Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow are the foreigners expected to attracted high bids as well.
(With inputs from PTI)
