Joshi, the surprise packet

 Robin Uthappa, expectedly, attracted the highest bid but the biggest gainer at the Karnataka Premier League players’ auction was Anirudha Joshi who emerged the third costliest player of the third edition of the T20 league.

Even as some of the bigger names in State cricket – Manish Pandey, Mayank Agarwal and KL Rahul – saw the franchises splurge relatively smaller amounts on them, Joshi, a Pool B player, went to Mangalore United who paid the all-rounder a whopping Rs 405,000 – nearly 41 times his base price of Rs 10,000 here at the M Chinnaswamy stadium on Thursday.  

Known for his big-hitting and handy off-spin bowling, Joshi elicited furious bidding between Hubli Tigers and Mysore Warriors before Mangalore made a late entry to buy the player.      

Uthappa, the fourth name to come up for auction through a draw of lots, reaffirmed his status as the premier batsman in the State, inviting some aggressive bidding which eventually stopped at Rs 530,000 with Bellary Tuskers. He was also the highest paid player in the previous auction in 2009 when Bangalore Brigadiers bought him for Rs 325,000.

His State-mate Abhimanyu Mithun was the other person to hit the jackpot with Bijapur Bulls shelling out Rs 5 lakh on the paceman. The 24-year-old may have lost out on Rs 10,000 as auctioneer Mark Rego pegged Mangalore’s second bid at Rs 70,000 when he ought to have quoted Rs 80,000.

Mithun, however, will not be complaining as do off-spinner Udit Patel and opening batsman Bharat Chipli. Udit was sold to Mangalore for Rs 290,000 while Belagavi Panthers paid Rs 4 lakh for Chipli’s services. Other major gainers were left-arm medium pacer S Arvind (Rs 3 lakh by Mangalore) and former State player B Akhil (Rs 3.10 lakh).   

Agarwal, Rahul and Pandey, who were the 21st, 22nd and 23rd players to appear in the auction, had to settle for smaller bids. While Agarwal was bought by Bellary for Rs 310,000, Mysore bagged Pandey for the same amount. Rahul went to Hubli for Rs 200,000.

“They (Pandey, Agarwal, Rahul) were a bit unlucky as they came up for auction towards the end,” said KSCA secretary Brijesh Patel. “Franchises weren’t left with much money to spend on them by that time,” he added.

Four franchises had Rs 12 lakh each to buy a maximum of five players from Pool A while Belagavi and Mangalore had Rs nine lakh left in the kitty after retaining R Vinay Kumar and Karun Nair respectively for Rs 3 lakh each. The two retained players, however, will have to be paid 15 percent more than the highest paid player in their respective teams. 

     
Two of the Pool A players – Shishir Bhavane and Anand Katti – went unsold and were included in Pool B but with a base price of Rs 25,000. Bhavane went laughing all the way to the bank after bagging a Rs 270,000 bid by Mysore Warriors while Katti managed to fetch Rs 35,000 from Hubli.  

The six franchises spent close to Rs 1.03 crore to buy a total of 107 players with Mangalore spending the most (Rs 19,55,750). Bellary, who paid a combined amount of Rs 840,000 to get Uthappa and Agarwal, spent only another Rs 360,000 to buy the rest of their squad.

In addition to the amount spent by the franchises, KSCA also chipped in with Rs five lakh each for six teams to be distributed among players at the rate of five percent of their bid amount.