Ajinkya Rahane, Suryakumar Yadav biggest picks in Mumbai T20 League

03/04/2018

Ajinkya Rahane and Suryakumar Yadav emerged as the highest bid players in the player auction for the upcoming T20 Mumbai League. On the other hand, stand-in India skipper Rohit Sharma's apparent unavailability due to the Sri Lanka series resulted in a low value than expected for him.

The auction for the much-hyped league, which appointed Sachin Tendulkar as its brand ambassador, was held at the Wankhede stadium where Rohit Sharma was bought by Mumbai North West for Rs 6 Lakhs as an icon player for his team. However, he may not turn up for his team this year as he is selected to lead the Indian cricket team in Sri Lanka for the Nidahas Trophy because of the absence of Virat Kohli.

While Shreyas Iyer was sold for a price of Rs.5 Lakhs to the Mumbai North Central, Ajinkya Rahane will be at the auction and emerged as the highest bid player with 7 lakhs. Meanwhile, Abhishek Nayar was picked as an icon player by Mumbai South at an expense of Rs. 4 Lakhs and the city’s middle order batsman Siddhesh Lad also went for 4 Lakhs to Mumbai South.

While it was a no-brainer ahead of the auction that the likes of Rohit and Rahane would attract maximum attention during the auctions, teams also decided to reward domestic performances and the players like Jay Bista (₹5 lakh), Shivam Dubey (₹ 5 lakh), Shashank Singh (₹5 lakh), Eknath Kerkar (₹4 lakh), Sagar Trivedi (₹3.4 lakh), Sairaj Patil (₹3.4 lakh), Hardik Tamore (₹3.4 lakh) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (₹3 lakh) attracted good bids.

While India U-19 skipper Prithvi Shaw, who will be available only for the last three days of the competition, was snapped up by Mumbai North for Rs 2.8 lakh, experienced pacer Dhawal Kulkarni went for Rs 1.5 lakh and was bought by Mumbai North East, after teams had exhausted their icon player buys.

On the other hand, Mumbai Ranji Trophy captain Aditya Tare will miss the competition due to injury concerns and fast bowler, Shardul Thakur will also have to give the tournament a miss as he will be on India duty while the tournament will be on.