Australian ODI World Cup star and left-arm pacer Mitchell Starc was sold to franchise Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for a whopping Rs 24.75 crore after a heated bidding war between the team and Gujarat Titans at the Indian Premier League Player 2024 auction held in Dubai on Tuesday.
The record bid for Starc is the highest so far in Tuesday’s auction and outstrips the Rs 20.5 crore SunRisers Hyderabad paid for Starc's Australian team captain Pat Cummins. Starc, along with 22 other players going under the hammer, commanded the highest base price of Rs 2 crore.
KKR made the winning bid with its IPL winning captain Gautam Gambhir by its side as their mentor. With 12 slots to fill after nearly emptying their pace bowling unit, two-time IPL champions KKR had to pick up the maximum number of players in Tuesday’s auction. Former India player and Gujarat Titans head coach Ashish Nehra was seen advising the other side.
Conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited-backed digital streaming app JioCinema streamed the auction live. During the heated bidding for Starc, the app showed a viewership of 3 crore.
The IPL 2024 uction, which is being held abroad for the first time, is the last before next year’s periodic overhaul of the entire squad. The auction will see 332 players going under the hammer for a maximum of 77 slots at the Coca Cola Arena in Dubai on Tuesday. This includes 216 Indians and 116 overseas players.
The ten teams have a total kitty of Rs 262.95 crore remaining. Four teams – CSK (Rs 31.40 crore), Gujarat Titans (Rs 38.15 crore), KKR (Rs 32.7 crore), Sunrisers Hyderabad (Rs 34 crore) have more than Rs 30 crore each in their kitties.
Several notable members of India’s business families such as Reliance Industries’ Nita Ambani along with son Akash Ambani for Mumbai Indians, Sun TV Network’s Kaviya Kalanithi Maran for Sunrisers Hyderabad and former Indian cricketers such as Sourav Ganguly, Gambhir and Nehra were a part of the auction process.