Ben Stokes becomes most expensive foreign player in Indian Premier League history

The decision to name him the Pune team’s comes a day before the players’ auctions scheduled to be held in Bengaluru.

While Goenka has said that he wasn’t too happy with the team’s showing in 2016, a major reason for the debacle was injuries to star players. The eight teams collectively spent just a little above ₹ 91 crore to fetch 66 players for their respective sides from a pool of 351 cricketers from India and all round the world.

Stokes will play with Dan Christian, who will rejoin Nottinghamshire this summer, for Rising Pune Supergiants, after the Australian was bought for £120,000. That’s a 10-figure number and the highest ever for an overseas player.

Although the team started well with a win over Mumbai Indians in the first match, it failed to maintain the consistency with the likes of Kevin Pietersen, Faf du Plessis and Steven Smith all withdrawing due to injuries. Last year, he was sold for Rs 8.5 crore.

Fellow all-rounder Chris Woakes will join them in the competition which runs from April 5 to May 21 after he was another big victor, going to Kolkata Knight Riders for £500,000. It will be great to share the dressing room with both these players. KKR picked up 4 all rounder, 3 bowlers and 2 batsmen, while DD bought 4 bowlers, 3 all-rounders, one wicket-keeper and one batsman. “Overall it went very well. I feel the BCCI should not let this go and should deal with it”, Azhar said. Nathan Coulter-Nile (Rs. 3.5 crore) got a buyer in the form of KKR while his fellow global Mitchell Johnson was sold out to Mumbai Indians at the cost of Rs. 2 crore. “We needed bowlers, and we got Rabada and Cummins”, Dua added. Mumbai Indians came into the auction with a purse of Rs 11.5 crore.

Two other players likely to be facing Ireland are Johnny Bairstow and Alex Hales, who remained unsold at the auction.

“We did our homework right”, said Keshav Bansal, owner of Gujarat Lions.

Sony Six SD and HD, the sports channels from Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN), will broadcast the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2017 player auction live and exclusive from Bangalore on February 20, 9 am onwards.

Although discovering his price via Twitter, the 25-year-old wasn’t initially sure of how much a Crore was worth, but knew that with more than one team seeking his services, it had placed him in the “best position”. Sometimes the prices dictate whether it works for you or not, but at the end of the day if you have decent 12 or 13 players who are in good form then you generally have a good tournament.