If it’s the IPL, it’s got to be big.The fourth edition, which will be the biggest ever, just made the players ultra-rich as staggering amounts were spent by the franchisees who were involved in an intense war of bidding at the auction on Saturday.
A stunning $52.85 million was spent by the 10 teams collectively of the $72.3 available in their kitty as the cricketers’ earnings, value and marketability sky-rocketed.
Gautam Gambhir topped the show, becoming the costliest player with a $2.4-million (`10.9-cr) pick by Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata Knight Riders, who also paid $2.1 million (`9.5 cr) for T20 specialist Yusuf Pathan. The million-dollar mark was constantly breached without the owners batting an eyelid as Robin Uthappa, formerly of Royal Challengers, was snapped up by new entrants Pune for $2.1m.
Bollywood stars Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty-Kundra held court while Shah Rukh was conspicuous by his absence but the money flowed freely for the Indian cricketers. Unlike the previous editions, when foreigners were the flavour, most of the IPL-4 top grossers were Indians with Rohit Sharma being aggressively bid for by Mumbai Indians and finally drawing $2 million (`9.06 cr) and Delhi Daredevils straining every sinew in outbidding Zinta’s outfit for Irfan Pathan for a cool $1.9 million (`8.61cr).
For retired players like Sourav Ganguly, it was a huge setback as he and another legend, West Indian Brian Lara, went unsold among the 88 players who came up for auction on the first day.