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IPL 2023 auction: Sam Curran leads the charge of the allrounders
The England star, Cameron Green and Ben Stokes walked away with a cool ₹52.25 crore between them – 25 percent of the total spending power in the room
It was more Rohit Shetty than Alfred Hitchcock – quite formulaic. The bids were racy, the action dramatic but with very little suspense. Everyone knew which players were expected to hit the jackpot at the IPL mini-auction in Kochi on Friday. And that’s exactly how it played out. An hour into proceedings, the three all-rounders – Sam Curran, Cameron Green and Ben Stokes, by far the best in the auction pool, walked away with a cool ₹52.25 crore between them – 25 percent of the total spending power in the room.
Curran’s value was the biggest in IPL auction history – ₹18.5 crore, beating the previous highest price of ₹16.25 crore which was paid by Rajasthan Royals for Chris Morris in 2021. As many as seven of the ten franchises were in the hunt for Curran but Punjab Kings (PBKS) outbid everyone else to snap up the Player-of-the-series from the recently-concluded T20 World Cup.
Even luck was smiling on the 24-year-old as his name came up first of the three all-rounders in the second auction set of the day.
“It is nice to have Sam back. He is world-class,” Ness Wadia, PBKS co-owner, told reporters. “We had him earlier, then we lost him to Chennai for ₹7.2 crore. These things happen in these top-up auctions. They are dynamic. You (franchise) want to go after a certain player and being a player, you stand to benefit.”
Soon enough, Morris’s record bid was going to be pushed back to third by another bidding war. This time for Australian all-rounder Cameron Green. Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting had recently given a classic TV moment, urging Australian coach Andrew McDonald to make him available for the auction, for he was going to chase him. Ponting’s Capitals did, but alas, they ran out of cash.
Mumbai Indians, who had lost the bidding war for Curran, pushed the limits to win Green for ₹17.50 crore.
“With Cam, we have been tracking his performances for the last three years. He is in the right age group. If you notice, we have been looking for players who are in the younger age group in the last two auctions for long-term value. Green fits in perfectly,” Mumbai Indians owner Akash Ambani said.
While Green is seen as one for the future, Ben Stokes has achieved all there is to in the limited-overs game with ODI and T20 World Cup wins. He may have some unfinished business in the IPL and the charismatic England Test captain will now push hard for Chennai Super Kings.
Stokes tweeted a plain yellow card, embracing the CSK colours, as soon as he was bought for ₹16.25 crore. His reunion with MS Dhoni – both played together for Rising Pune Super Giant - is likely to evoke as much interest as the Mumbai Indians pairing of Jofra Archer and Jasprit Bumrah. Stokes could well be a strong captaincy candidate after Dhoni as well.
The splurge extended to two more buys – West Indian wicket-keeper bat Nicholas Pooran and the emerging England hard-hitting bat Harry Brook. Lucknow Super Giants already had a settled wicket-keeper in Quinton de Kock but they did not hold back during the bidding to win the ex-WI captain for Rs. 16 crore. “We were looking for a finisher. And Pooran fitted perfectly,” explained LSG owner Shashwat Goenka.
Brook, fresh from his exploits in Pakistan where he blazed his way to three hundreds in his debut Test series, was chased down by Sunrisers Hyderabad for Rs.13.25 crore.
Sitting idle all through the auction, watching rival teams go crazy, can be unnerving. But some teams like Kolkata Knight Riders, not fans of being dictated by auction dynamics, said they didn’t mind. “I was jokingly telling someone, it’s going to be a spectator sport for us. We had done all the work beforehand,” Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore said.
Brook became the first specialist batter to cross the ₹10 crore mark at auctions. Franchises may have gone that deep in the bidding for an inexperienced overseas batter with high potential due to the Impact Rule. “Instead of looking at an allrounder, we can now look at replacing a bowler with a batter. That gives us a little bit of flexibility in picking specialists for each spot,” SRH head coach Brian Lara said.
“It’s a good rule. I believe the sport has to evolve. It will create a lot of excitement,” former player and IPL GC member Pragyan Ojha said. “We had a super-sub rule during my playing days.”
Once the big names were called out, it was good news for a couple of smaller nations. Ireland’s left-arm pacer Joshua Little became the first Irishman to be picked in the IPL auction when Gujarat Titans signed him for ₹4.4 crores. Seasoned T20 freelancer from Namibia who has previously also represented South Africa David Wiese went to KKR.
Veteran spinners Amit Mishra and Piyush Chawla also found takers, both going at their base price of ₹50 lakhs.
