Vadiraj Kanakagiri

The first time after the debut year, the grandest T20 tournament in the world had to conduct a major auction of sorts, courtesy of two new teams joining the fold. And the teams went all guns blazing, some shocking, some surprising, and some expected buys followed after, as usually happens at these auctions.

It was all set up beautifully to see how it all unfolds, as far as the marquee players were concerned. Teams had retained whom they wanted and two teams had their picks. And few players who weren't contempt with what their franchisees were offering them, went into auctions to see what the market had to offer them.

Ishan Kishan, as expected, got the big bucks at the auction today with Mumbai leaving no stone unturned in keeping him to themselves. He bagged a whopping 15.25 crores, just 75 lakhs less than his captain, who was retained for 16cr. Shreyas Iyer was another big name in the list, who was a captain material, went to KKR for 12.25cr. SRK seems to have the captain's headache sorted out.

The ever-improving and ever grinning Shikhar Dhawan was bought by PBKS for 8.25cr. Considering his mountains of runs in previous editions, this seemed a great buy. They also stole the fiery pacer Rabada from the capitals by going as high as  9.25cr to get him. Coach Kumble also managed to get hold of Rahul Chahar for 5.25cr, which would be a great thing for the young spinner early in his career.

RR had a different approach to the auction, in fact, wierd would a good word. Having already retained Jaiswal, they went shopping for another left handed opening batsman in Devdutt padikkal and shelled 7.75cr. With all due respect to DDP, this price seemed a bit too high considering them already having similar resources. To top it off, they bought another left hander, in the middle order, Shimron Hetmyer for 8.5cr. 

Another big boy in the market was Ravichandran Ashwin. As he was a captaincy material, experts thought of him as a big buy candidate. And teams went for him too. Not for long. The Royals got hold of him for 5cr which seemed a bargain buy. Soon after, they made another successful buy, by getting the services of Yuzi chahal for 6.5cr. It'd be great to see how this combo works out. They completed their slots in bowling department with two more great signings by bagging Prasidh Krishna and Trent Boult for 10 and 8 crores respectively.

RCB seemed to have marked their players right from the onset. They didn't seemed to much interested in going after anything and everything. But once the name of player that they wanted came up, they didn't mind shelling out some extra money to get them. After releasing Yuzi to auction pool, they had to strengthen their spin department. And so they did, by buying Wanindu Hasaranga for 10.75cr. 

Another massive buy from the RCBians was when they managed to buy back their superstar of the last season, Harshal Patel, for 10.75cr as well. They also got the services of Josh Hazlewood for 7.75cr to complete their set of bowling riches with Siraj in the fold already. So the story for RCB might change this year, at least in the bowling department.