On 19th of December 2023, the cricketing world witnessed the moment of history being made during the grand mini IPL 2024 auction held at the Coca Cola Arena in Dubai. Like records being shattered by batters on the cricket field by scoring runs or by bowlers taking wickets, here at the arena 10 franchises locked horns with their respective available purses and strategies only to create new records in the cricketing league history. IPL 2024 promises to be a thriller if we go through to the auction
With over 333 players capped and uncapped going under the hammer, the flavor of the season was clearly the Australians who had the major impact over all the world in the year 2023 winning two most coveted trophies The ICC World Test Championship and The ICC Cricket World Cup 2023.It was clearly evident that the likes of star players like Travis Head, Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins who in the view of the upcoming T20I World cup making themselves available for the auction will go hammers and tongs and acquire huge prices.
Hardly anyone in the cricketing world could speculate that one of the worlds richest league IPL would grab the eyeballs of the whole world within the few hours of the auction and will witness a new record set by Pat Cummins to get 20.50 crores from Sunrisers Hyderabad(SRH) to be broken within next few minutes of the hammer by his fellow Australian teammate Mitchell Starc who secured a whopping historic price of 24.75 crores from Kolkata Knight Riders(KKR).
Such was the domino effect of the auction war that even Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore was left amused and couldn’t control his emotions while speaking on the sidelines of the auction in the arena regarding acquisition of Mitchell Starc at such a historic price and the logic behind IPL becoming such a Mega league since its inception in 2008.
Everybody comes to auction with their plans- KKR CEO Venky Mysore on IPL 2024
Less than an hour after Australia’s ODI World Cup-winning captain Pat Cummins shattered all records at the IPL 2024 auction in Dubai on Tuesday, with Sunrisers Hyderabad acquiring him for a record offer of INR 20.50 crore, fellow Aussie and multiple World Cup winner himself, Mitchell Starc fetched an all -time high bid of whopping INR 24.75 crore from Kolkata Knight Riders.
This was the second time that the two-time IPL winners signed the left-arm pacer, having roped him back in 2018 for INR 9.4 crore before Starc missed the season with a right-leg injury.
Going into the process of bidding, KKR weren’t however part of what was at least one of the longest bidding processes in IPL history right from the start. It was Delhi Capitals who showed interest with Rishabh Pant raising the paddle at the base price of INR 2 crore before they tapped out with Mumbai Indians standing tall with their 8 crore offer.
It was then when KKR entered and outlasted MI only to find a fresh challenge from Gujarat Titans. The battle lasted for at least 10 minutes before Gujarat, at the end of a long discussion between Ashish Nehra and the team analyst, backed out as KKR signed back Starc for INR 24.75 crore breaking an all time IPL bidding record.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event at the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai, KKR CEO Venky Mysore recalled that in the inaugural season of IPL way back in 2008, all teams had a salary cap of 20 crore before bursting into a laughter.
“Well, you know, I think my take on this is if you sort of look at it from the set of lenses of a price you pay for a player. And now it seems like wow, 24.75. I was telling someone that the salary cap of a team when IPL started in 2008 was 20 crores, the entire salary cap,” said KKR CEO
“So things have changed, right? But, you know, I think our view is, when the auction is over, all the 10 teams are going to walk out of the auction having spent 100 crores and each team decides to slice it differently. So what you’ve paid to somebody up down what not is matter of perspective. Ultimately, we’re all spending the same amount of money,” he stated.
KKR, who were in the bidding process for West Indies captain Rovman Powell and England all-rounder Chris Woakes, also signed young Indian fast bowler Chetan Sakariya, Indian wicketkeeper-batter KS Bharat and 18-year-old uncapped batter from Mumbai, Angkrish Raghuvanshi.
Speaking further, Venky Mysore also stated the importance of having a planned strategy in order to retain or acquire a player for the franchise .
“When you plan your team, from a retention standpoint, with the auction so far away, you have no idea of who are the other players from other teams who are being released, trades happening, and all that. So it’s a very dynamic environment. So you don’t also go into the auction with a mindset… I mean, we had options. You have to have options, like like they do. We could have been in the same shoes answering saying, Sorry, we lost out to GT. And we have a plan,” he further added.
“And so I think everybody comes with their own plans. We’ve been around long enough. I mean, I don’t know this is my 14th auction. And so, you know, you win some, you lose some, and you just have to be prepared. So it wasn’t like you came in with that mindset, but obviously he was a preferred player from that skill set standpoint. It all sometimes works out. Initially, we were not successful in some of the bids,” he added.
“Maybe that worked in our favor, because we did end up having money to do this, otherwise, we might not have been able to do it. So we’re just thankful that we were able to have him on our side,” he concluded.
Certainly now it is confirmed that the auction of IPL 2024 has certainly raised the bar for the upcoming IPL season come March 2024 and it would be interesting to see how these highly priced Marquee players perform during the course of the season .