IPL 2018: Most expensive players in each year of the tournament till now
A decade since its inception in the year 2008, the Indian premier League today is the annual highlight of the cricketing calendar. Cricket, especially Indian cricket, has never been the same since. It is a melting pot of different cultures with players from all around the world sharing the same dressing room keeping aside their rivalries for national colours.
The importance of the IPL can be gauged from the fact that the FTP (Future Tours Program) of the ICC is scheduled keeping a separate window for the IPL.
Every year an auction is held to determine which player is going to play for which franchise. Player wages are decided at this very auction and the highest paid players are paid handsome amounts of money for only two months of action. It has the potential to make cricketers the best paid athletes in the world if it keeps growing at the same rate.
This attracts talent from all over the world. Mega auctions are usually held after a period of 3 years. So who are the costliest players in the IPL auctions over the years?
Let us have a look.
2008 - Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Chennai Super Kings), $1.5 million (Approximately Rs. 6 crore)
The first edition of the IPL saw a few of the superstars going directly into their home teams as icon players and thus were not part of the auction. Just before the IPL auctions started Team Chennai had decided there would be no looking back. They would go for Mahendra Singh Dhoni, they agreed, at any cost.
After an intense bidding war with the Mumbai Indians, Chennai got their man for a whopping $1.5 million - an amount that defied all predictions.
It was a bid that stunned some of India's leading corporate names huddled around adjoining tables and set the tone for the huge amounts of money that would be splashed in the players' auction in the years to come.
2009 -Kevin Pietersen (Bangalore Royal Challengers) and Andrew Flintoff (Chennai Super Kings), $1.55 million (Approximately 7.75 crore)
The 2009 auction of the IPL was relatively a smaller one, with only seventeen players bought in the auction. Nevertheless big money was spent as two Englishmen - Pietersen and Flintoff attracted the highest bids from the teams. MS Dhoni was keen on roping in Engalnd's explosive all-rounder and Chennai Superkings did just that even though they had to pay more for Flintoff than they did for Dhoni a year earlier.
Bangalore didn't even enter the fray for Flintoff and straightaway started bidding for Pietersen once his name was called. The Rajasthan Royals tried to keep pace, but ultimately Vijay Mallya had his man.