70 slots available, 60 filled
ESPNcricinfo– While all teams filled their full overseas quota of eight players, only three of them – Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Capitals and Rajasthan Royals – filled all 25 slots in their squad. Kolkata Knight Riders ended with 21 players, the fewest in the field.
Caribbean hit a 6, England’s fifer
West Indies ended up with the highest representation among overseas sides, with as many as six of their stars attracting bids. With most of them coming at relatively low, below-one-crore base prices, they were all snapped up for a cumulative INR 17 crores, five times their combined base price of INR 3.4 crores. England, despite their players not being available after April 25, 2019 – they will miss almost half the tournament – ended up with five players, all first-timers, being bought. Sam Curran, Jonny Bairstow, Joe Denly, Harry Gurney and Liam Livingstone are all set to make their IPL bow in 2019.
Capped Indian fast bowlers: Worth (over five times) their weight in gold
Eight capped Indian fast bowlers were up for bidding. Only two – Karnataka’s Vinay Kumar and Abhimanyu Mithun – went unsold. The rest fetched hefty price tags, total 5.3 times their listed reserve price. Jaydev Unadkat, a left-arm seamer and hence a precious commodity, was bought back by Rajasthan Royals, for 5.6 times his INR 1.5 Crore base price. That still represented a bargain for Royals, who had spent INR 11.5 crore on him last year before releasing him in the off-season.
Yuvraj Singh’s 94% drop in value over three auctions
Once a near-guarantee to trigger bidding wars, Yuvraj Singh’s value at the IPL auction has declined since Delhi Daredevils bought him for 16 crore in the 2015 auction. On Tuesday, he went unsold in the first round, before Mumbai Indians bought him in the rapid-fire bidding towards the end. This is the second successive season he has been sold at base price.
Yuvraj, Ishant equal Parthiv’s six, still one short of Finch
You either go unsold and fade into oblivion, or live long enough to play for every IPL team. With their latest IPL deals, Yuvraj and Ishant Sharma’s count has risen up to six IPL sides, equalling the record set by a number of others already, most famously Parthiv Patel. They’re still one short of perpetual franchise-hopper Aaron Finch’s, whose all-time record count stands at seven. Yuvraj hasn’t yet represented CSK, KKR and Royals among the active franchises. Will he be around long enough to become the first to complete the entire set?
16 years 54 days, and other teenage signings
Prayas Ray Barman is all of 16 years and 54 days old, and won’t be 17 by the time IPL 2019 comes around. Royal Challengers Bangalore put in a 1.5 crore bid for the teenager, a mystery spinner making waves in age-group cricket. If he plays in the upcoming edition, Barman will become the youngest player in the tournament’s history, going past Mujeeb ur Rahman, who debuted for Kings XI Punjab aged 17 years and 11 days.
He is among five players born after 2000 to be picked up by teams at the auction, along with Rasikh Dhar (Mumbai), Riyan Parag (Royals), Devdutt Padikkal (RCB) and Prab Simran Singh (KXIP).
42 – Varun Chakravarthy’s magical number
Varun Chakravarthy was an architect who’d given up his cricketing hopes not so long ago, but was almost certain to be among the biggest buys at the auction, having excelled with his mystery spin in the Tamil Nadu Premier League. As an uncapped player, he had set his reserve price at just INR 20 lakhs, and benefited from a multi-way bidding war between franchises. When the hammer came down, he had fetched himself 8.4 crores, 42 times his base price. It fell just short of the 45 multiple paid by Rising Pune Supergiant for Tamil Nadu legspinner M Ashwin in the 2016 auction, comfortably the highest in the last four seasons.
