IPL Auction 2019: 5 weirdest bidding wars
The 2019 IPL Auction is done and dusted and we have seen a lot of surprise picks! As many as 60 players (out of 351) were bought by the 8 teams – speaning a whopping 108 crores in the process.
A lot of surprise bids were seen and that saw players from all over the world get some crazy prices. Here are the weirdest biding wars from the 2019 auctions that saw the player's prices shoot up like crazy:
#5 – Varun Chakravarthy
When the auction list was announced, a lot of people made their predictions for the player who will fetch the biggest bid. While his name was doing the rounds before, not many picked Varun Chakravarthy to be the biggest pick. And that was mainly because only a few knew about him.
Unless one has been following the TNPL or Tamil Nadu cricket, they wouldn't have known much about Varun. But now, with the IPL auction done and dusted, he is the talk of the town. Everyone wants to know who he is and why he has fetched 8.40 crores in the auctions.
Delhi Capitals started off the bidding at 20 lakhs for the spinner and were immediately joined by the Chennai Super Kings. The two sides were adamant on signing him at any cost and never kept the paddle down. At 3.4 crores, CSK thought they had him.
That was the maximum that could have bid for him as that was all they had left in their kitty. Just when they thought they had their man, Kings XI Punjab surprised all and joined in at 3.6 crores.
They then had a battle for Delhi Capitals and the price just kept rising. By now, it had reached 4.8 crores and DC backed out. KXIP were all smiles and thought they had him wrapped up for 24x his price. But there was a twist in the tale.
Rajasthan Royals popped up with a 5 crore bid. KXIP were stunned but were in no mood to let go of the player. The two sides kept bidding and the price had risen to 6.8 crores when RR backed out.
The KXIP team was jubilant once again but Kolkata Knight Riders put a stop to that within seconds. They were now determined to get the player despite having a little over 10 crores left and just 14 players in their squad at that time.
However, KKR kept bidding for him and it took a whopping 8.4 crore bid from KXIP to force stop the bidding from Knight Riders. Punjab got their man finally but for 42x his base price – the highest at the 2019 auctions.