IPL 2018 Player Auction: 15 cricket stars who did not even turn up for bidding
Bengaluru: The recently-concluded Indian Premier League (IPL) auctions here over the last two days saw a lot of surprises, with a lot of key players going unsold.
Also read: Chahal, Stokes big buys; Gayle goes unsold
While West Indian superstar Chris Gayle was bought by Kings XI Punjab for Rs 2 crore in the third time he was called up. Lasith Malinga was one of the unfortunate names to have remained unsold.
Read more: Here are squads of all 8 teams after IPL 2018 Player Auction
England’s Ben Stokes was the most expensive player, who went to Rajasthan Royals for Rs 12.5 crore.
Meanwhile, Jaydev Unadkat was the most expensive capped Indian cricketer, who also went to Rajasthan Royals for Rs 11.5 crore.
Also read: Indian Premier League 2018 Player Auction: As it happened
A total of 578 players were shortlisted for the auction from an aggregate of 1122 cricketers. During the event, a total of 169 cricketers were bought by the eight franchises.
Notably, a lot of key players like Aiden Markram, Australia’s Ashton Agar, Hilton Cartwright among others went unsold.
Some of the other leading cricketers like Tom Latham, David Willey and Thisara Perera, too did not find any takers.
Surprisingly, a lot of other players’ names were not even called out during the auction, and automatically went unsold.
This list includes some Indian cricketers, including Cheteshwar Pujara, Praveen Kumar and Munaf Patel.
Here is the list of all cricketers who went unsold without their names being called out during the two-day event:
1) Cheteshwar Pujara
2) Praveen Kumar
3) Munaf Patel
4) Irfan Pathan
5) Ross Taylor
6) Darren Sammy
7) Angelo Mathews
8) Mohammad Shahzad
9) Steven Finn
10) Wayne Parnell
11) Cameron White
12) Darren Bravo
13) Dwayne Smith
14) Tamim Iqbal
15) Marlon Samuels
The new season of the IPL will begin on April 7, with the final on May 27. This season will see the return of MS Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings and Steve Smith’s Rajasthan Royals after two years as they were suspended due to spot-fixing.
