3 players IPL teams could’ve retained instead of buying them for more money

The mega auction for the Indian Premier League took place over the last weekend. As many as 600 players were supposed to go under the hammer and a total of 204 players were sold to 10 different teams. As expected, Indian players were on demand and some of them went for a whopping price. However, one felt that a few could’ve been retained by the franchises for a lesser amount.

Ishan Kishan – Mumbai Indians

21-year-old Ishan Ishan Kishan was the talk of the town before the IPL mega auction with many predicting the explosive wicket-keeper batter to go for big bucks. And, so was the case when the auctions did arrive. Kishan ended up fetching the biggest of paychecks amongst all the players who went under the hammer over the two days.

It was Mumbai Indians who took on the Sunrisers Hyderabad in an intense bidding war that they eventually won but not before shelling a whopping Rs 15.25 crores for the southpaw.

It must be noted, Kishan has been plying his trade for the franchise since 2018 when he was first bought by them for Rs 6.4 crore. MI did have the chance to retain him pre-auction as one of their four permitted retentions. However, the franchise went on to announce Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Surya Kumar Yadav and Kieron Pollard as their retentions. In hindsight, the Mumbai think tank might have missed a trick by not retaining Kishan. The five-time IPL champions could well have retained him in place of Suryakumar Yadav as the dynamics of the auctions and Surya might not have fetched a bigger amount as Kishan and it would’ve been easy for MI to buy him back.

Kolkata Knight Riders- Nitish Rana

Nitish Rana has been with the Kolkata Knight Riders since the 2018 season when they first bought him for Rs 3.4 crore. He has been a vital member of their squad since. However, KKR chose not to retain him and instead named Andre Russel, Varun Chakravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer, and Sunil Narine as the four retentions.

The Kolkata based franchisee however did manage to pick up Rana at the mega auction paying Rs 8 crores for him. The franchisee would however feel that they could have retained Rana in place of Narine, whose stocks might not have been as high as that of the Delhi batter. They could still have acquired the mystery spinner, possibly at a lesser amount than Rs 8 crores.

Deepak Chahar- Chennai Super Kings

The 4-time IPL champions, Chennai Super Kings, created a new record at this year’s mega auction. It was the first time that the franchisee has bought a player for over Rs 10 crores. CSK acquired Deepak Chahar’s services for a mammoth amount of Rs 14 crores.

Though CSK retained Ravindra Jadeja, MS Dhoni, Moeen Ali and Ruturaj Gaikwad, the Indian speedster recently confirmed that he was categorically informed by the Super Kings of them going all out to buy him back at the auctions. However, the franchisee might have underestimated Chahar’s monetary value.

CSK’s bond with their captain MS Dhoni is well documented. However, if they could somehow have overlooked the sentiments in their retention decisions and instead retained Chahar, they could well have saved a few crores.