IPL Auction: Mitchell Starc lands record £2.34m contract with Kolkata Knight Riders
Australia fast bowlers Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins have overtaken England’s Sam Curran as the most expensive players in Indian Premier League history.
Starc has not played in the IPL since 2015 and the left-arm quick’s return to the fray drew a bidding war that ended in an unprecedented bid of £2.34m (24.75 crore rupees) from Kolkata Knight Riders.
Cummins, 30, also had a base price of just under £200,000 at Tuesday’s auction in Dubai but, like Starc, a four-way fight for his services, eventually won by Sunrisers Hyderabad, hiked his fee 10-fold.
England pair Harry Brook and Chris Woakes, meanwhile, picked up deals worth just under £400,000 each for the world’s most lucrative T20 cricket competition, which is due to resume in March 2024.
Cummins sat out the 2023 tournament to focus on international cricket but became even hotter property after leading his side to the World Test Championship and last month’s 50-over World Cup on Indian soil.
Four IPL teams vied for his signature and Sunrisers Hyderabad ended up paying 20.5 crore rupees, eclipsing the previous high of 18.5 crore (£1.77m) Punjab Kings paid for England all-rounder Curran last year.
Sunrisers had plenty of budget to play with having released Brook after one season of a £1.3m deal, with the Yorkshireman picking up a healthy but much-reduced payday with the Capitals.
He hit one superb century in his first IPL campaign but was otherwise badly short of runs with just 190 in 11 matches.
Woakes was later drafted for just under £400,000 by Punjab, where he will join his England team-mates Curran and Liam Livingstone.
Sunrisers also splurged on Cummins’ fellow Australian Travis Head, who capped a stellar year with a match-winning 137 in the World Cup final in Ahmedabad. He cost around £645,000 (6.8 crore) as he returned to the tournament for the first time since 2017.
West Indies T20 captain Rovman Powell was the first player to go under the hammer and fetched a surprisingly lavish £700,000 bid from Rajasthan Royals, while New Zealand all-rounder Daryl Mitchell scooped the biggest cheque of his career when he went to Chennai Super Kings for £1.3million.
CSK also signed Mitchell’s fellow Kiwi Rachin Ravindra, the breakout star of the World Cup, for a modest £170,000.