Pat Cummins was at the centre of one of the most extraordinary bidding battles in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL) player auctions, outmatched only by the one that went down for his Australia teammate Mitchell Starc just under an hour later. The Australia captain capped off a golden year, in which he led Australia to the World Test Championship and World Cup titles and retained the Ashes in England, by becoming the first player to cost over ₹20 crore in the IPL auction and for a few minutes, he was the most expensive player in the history of the league.
Cummins was bought by Sunrisers Hyderabad for ₹20.5 crore. SRH’s prime contender for the pacer was Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), who interestingly only had a total purse of ₹23.5 crore. RCB had also released their primary death over pacer Harshal Patel before the auction and were the ones who lifted the paddle to make Cummins touch the ₹20 crore mark.
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Former India and Kolkata Knight Riders batter Aakash Chopra believes that RCB were lucky that they didn’t win the bid for Cummins. “They had totally made up their mind that they wanted Pat Cummins at any cost and they kept going after him, kept lifting the paddle. It went till 20 crores and I folded my hands and said – ‘think a little’. If you had got Pat Cummins for 20 crores and you had 23.25 crores, would Pat Cummins have bowled from both ends?” Chopra said on his Youtube channel.
“If they had bought Pat Cummins, if SRH had pulled out at that stage, and they would have got him for 20 crores, their team would have become extremely weak. When you released so many players and if you had picked Pat Cummins on a small Chinnaswamy ground with a flat pitch, you would have been hit a lot,” he added.
Cummins’s record stood for a few minutes before Mitchell Starc went past him, having been bought by KKR for ₹24.75 crore. It was Mumbai Indians and Delhi Capitals who initially battled it out for him. However, the bidding war was then taken over by Gujarat Titans and KKR, with the latter eventually winning out. IPL 2024 will hence be Starc’s first season in the cash-rich league since 2015.
