After Carlos Brathwaite carted the first four deliveries from Benjamin Stokes for successive sixes to ensure that the West Indies won the 2016 ICC World Twenty20 final in Kolkata, English pacer Ben Stokes had admitted to suffering “complete devastation”. On Monday, however, it was a sort of redemption for him as he emerged the costliest foreign player ever at the IPL, with Rising Pune Supergiants buying him for a stupendous Rs 14.50 crore at the auction.
The auction price would come as some sort of consolation for the 25-year-old New Zealand-born England bowler, who had a base price of Rs 2 crore but fetched many times more than that price after Mumbai Indians, Delhi Daredevils and SunRisers Hyderabad were locked in an intense bidding battle.
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On that fateful evening of April 3, 2016, Stokes was given the responsibility of bowling the final with the West Indies requiring 19 runs at the Eden Gardens. Brathwaite was in a murderous mood though, slamming four successive sixes to make short work of the imposing target. Stokes was gutted as sat on his haunches with his hands holding the head.
“I thought, ‘I’ve just lost the World Cup’. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do. It took me so long to get back on my feet. I didn’t want to get back up. It was like the whole world had come down on me. There weren’t any good things going through my mind. It was just complete devastation,” he later admitted to The Telegraph of England.
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Stokes, who has bagged 10 wickets in 21 T20 games for England, hasn’t reacted on his twitter handle as yet, but he surely must have received the incredible news.
“We knew he was going to be expensive. We do believe he is going to be there for the first 14 games and right now, we are focussing on first 14, and we are very happy with this. We pretty much knew we are not going to get him below this price,” Pune franchise owner Sanjeev Goenka told reporters in Bangalore, where the auction took place.
It was supposed to be a low profile auction with it being the 10th and final season of the IPL before fresh auction for teams are called in next year. Also, all the players are expected to go into the mega auction next year. There was a surprise in store however, with eight teams buying 66 cricketers, including 27 players from overseas, at a combined cost of Rs 91.15 crore.
Apart from Stokes, a few other England players fetched handsome rewards. Fast bowler Tymal Mills was the second most expensive buy of the auction with the Royal Challengers Bangalore buying him for Rs 12 crore while all-rounder Chris Woakes' purchase by the Kolkata Knight Riders was for Rs 4.2 crore. Curiously however, England’s limited-overs captain Eoin Morgan was taken at his base price of Rs 2 crore by Kings XI Punjab.
The top eight buys were all foreigners. They are as follows:
1. Ben Stokes (Rising Pune Supergiants): Rs 14.50 crore.
2. Tymal Mills (Royal Challengers Bangalore): Rs 12 crore.
3. Trent Boult (Kolkata Knight Riders): Rs 5 crore.
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4. Kagiso Rabada (Delhi Daredevils): Rs 5 crore.
5. Pat Cummins (Delhi Daredevils): Rs 4.5 crore.
6. Chris Woakes (Kolkata Knight Riders): Rs 4.2 crore.
7. Rashid Khan Arman (Sunrisers Hyderabad): Rs 4 crore.
8. Nathan Coulter-Nile (Kolkata Knight Riders): Rs 3.5 crore.
The most expensive Indian at the auction was leg-spinner Karn Sharma, bought by Mumbai Indians for Rs 3.2 crore, while uncapped left-arm pacer T. Natarajan went to the Kings XI Punjab for Rs 3 crore.
Rajasthan left-arm pacer Aniket Chaudhary went for Rs 2 crore to the RCB while young Karnataka off-spinner Krishnappa Gowtham also fetched Rs 2 crore after a successful bid by the Mumbai Indians.
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Handsome 32-year-old all-rounder Mohammad Nabi made history for Afghanistan, becoming their first cricketer to be bought at an IPL auction. SunRisers Hyderabad got him for Rs 30 lakh. Nabi will have the company of his Afghan teammate, 18-year-old leg-spinner Rashid Khan, who was also bought by Sunrisers Hyderabad but for a whopping Rs 4 crore.
Afghanistan coach Lalchand Rajput, a former India Test batsman, tweeted “v happy fir him (sic)”.
There was consolation for the UAE, too, as batsman Chirag Suri became the first player from an ICC Associate Member country, after the Netherlands' Ryan Ten Doeschate, to play in the IPL. Gujarat Lions bought Suri for Rs 10 lakh.
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Fast bowler Varun Aaron went to Kings XI Punjab Rs 2.8 crore while left-arm spinner Pawan Negi, bought by Delhi Daredevils for Rs 8.5 crore last year, was sold for Rs 1 crore to the RCB this time around.
Several well-known players remained unsold. They included Cheteshwar Pujara, Ishant Sharma, S. Badrinath, Irfan Pathan, Dinesh Chandimal, Ross Taylor, Pragyan Ojha, Imran Tahir, Unmukt Chand, Marlon Samuels and Parvez Rasool.
