IPL auction: Ben Stokes bought by Rising Pune Supergiants for Rs.14.5 crore

Mumbai: England all-rounder Ben Stokes has been bought by the Rising Pune Supergiants for a whopping Rs. 14.5 crore at the IPL 2017 player auction in Bangalore.

“He is a complete player. He completes our squad. We were lacking a player of this genre in our team,” said Supergiants owner Sanjiv Goenka. “We have many heroes but this was the one hero we were lacking.”

“It was a conscious strategy. We knew he was going to be expensive. We believe he is going to be there for the first 14 games and right now our focus is on those 14 games,” he added.

England's ODI and T20I captain Eoin Morgan was bought at base price of Rs. 2 crore by the Kings XI Punjab, while Sri Lankan captain Angelo Mathews went to Delhi Daredevils for his base price of Rs. 2 crore.

India all-rounder Pawan Negi, who generated a bid for Rs. 8.5 crore last year from the Delhi Daredevils, was bought by the Royal Challengers Bangalore for Rs. 1 crore.

Prominent players like Martin Guptill, Jason Roy, Ross Taylor, Alex Hales, Chris Jordan and Irfan Pathan went unsold in the early part of the auction.