IPL auction 2016: The unheard and the untested, who stole the show

Unlike the past auctions, where a Yuvraj Singh or Glenn Maxwell hogged the limelight, this time around it was the literal unknowns. Pawan Negi, the left-arm spinner from Delhi, definitely stands out of the uncapped players pack after fetching a whopping Rs. 8.5 crore paycheck from the Delhi Daredevils (DD). Trying to understand the logic behind the cash spree is a futile exercise, but what exactly DD saw in Negi to throw their biggest bid at the 23-year old youngster shall remain to be seen.

Pawan Negi is not a newcomer to the IPL; in fact he made his debut in the 2012 season for Delhi Daredevils and picked up seven wickets off eight matches at an impressive economy rate of 6.90. But IPL has a notoriously short memory, and when the 2013 season came along, the youngster was reduced to a single appearance and was packed off to CSK by 2014. He remained wicket-less in the 2014 season, but with Dhoni opting to play three spinners in the 2015 season, the left-armer became the third choice at CSK behind Ashwin and Jadeja. The 23-year old had an average season picking six wickets off 10 matches and scoring 116 runs.

The prime reason for the bidding war around Negi can be attributed to a recency effect behind his selection to the Indian team for the World cup T20. He is also a part of the Indian squad for the three-match T20 series against Sri Lanka, which starts next week. But, Negi carved his path to the squad after picking 16 wickets in nine matches in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and six wickets in seven matches in the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy and three off two in the Deodhar trophy. All these look good, but nothing to warrant an 8.5 crore paycheck. It implies that DD spent their highest bid on a youngster with potential. If there is one thing we have learned from IPL, then it is that obese paychecks do not guarantee success – ask Yuvraj Singh.

The KC Cariappa of this year was M Ashwin. The leg-spinner’s performance of 10 wickets at an economy rate of 5.52 in six Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy matches helped him earn nine times the base price of Pragyan Ojha, who has taken 89 wickets in 92 IPL matches, and yet went unsold. The 25-year old from Tamil Nadu is no new kid on the block; he made his debut in November 2012 against Odisha in a Ranji Trophy match. However, he had to come back to the domestic circuit in the Vijay Hazare trophy 2015/16 after a gap of three years and turned things in his favour with some good performances. Whether it was his stint with the Chennai Super Kings as net bowler or the good word put by Tamil Nadu captain R Ashwin, Murugan got the shock of his life when he saw the 4.5 crore bid.

The best time to perform is obviously before the IPL auction, and that was exactly what Rishabh Pant did. The Delhi boy scored an 18-ball record-breaking fifty in the 2016 U-19 World Cup match against Nepal just five days before the auction to earn a Rs. 1.9 crore bid from Delhi Daredevils – an amount that was more than 6 times the bid received for the India U-19 captain Ishan Kishan, who is also a left-hander and wicketkeeper. The 18-year old from Delhi will be fourth wicketkeeper in the DD squad after Quinton de Kock, Sanju Samson and Sam Billings, which will significantly reduce his time on the pitch. None of the uncapped players, who fetched the big bids in the auction yesterday, have outstanding records in the domestic circuit, and many of them are yet to turn out for their state in a first class match.

Will all of them deliver justice to their paychecks? For that we have to wait until April, when all these players arrive on our television sets to show off their skills. M Ashwin could be a find for the Rising Pune Supergiants or he could become the KC Cariappa of next season and slide away from the limelight, we hope it is not the latter