IPL 2018 Player Auction – Statistical Highlights

The much awaited IPL Player Auction event for 2018 came to an end after two days of hard work put by the franchises to rope in the best among the lot for succeeding. The eight participating teams bought as many as 169 players for a whopping 431.4 crore INR. A total of 19 right to match cards were utilized by the teams to bring back their players while only four teams could complete the maximum quota of 25 players to form the squad.

All the numbers that were recorded during the IPL Player Auction for the 2018 season:

0 – Kolkata Knight Riders are the only team in the 2018 IPL auction to empty their purse of Rs.80 crores. They are also the team with the fewest number of signings (19 players).

1 – Virat Kohli remains as the only player to be associated with the same franchise in all 11 editions of the IPL. CSK bought Harbhajan Singh who played ten seasons for MI while Shaun Marsh went unsold after associated with KXIP in the first decade.

1 – The 2018 season will be the first IPL season where Robin Uthappa and Manish Pandey will represent two different franchises. Both the Karnataka players appeared for MI in 2008, RCB in 2009 and 2010, Pune Warriors in 2011, 2012 2013 and for KKR from 2014 to 2017.

1 – Afghanistan’s Mujeeb Zadran is the first player born in the 21st century to bag a bid in the IPL auction. He also became the youngest player to be bought in an auctioned at the age of 16 years and 306 days.

8.8 – Krunal Pandya’s price of INR 8.8 crore is the highest for an uncapped Indian player in IPL auction history. Delhi Daredevils bought Pawan Negi for 8.5 crores for the 2016 IPL season before he made his India debut. Kings XI Punjab bought Pandya but Mumbai Indians used their RTM card.

11.5 – The price at which Rajasthan Royals bought Jaydev Unadkat in the auction. This is the highest bid made for an Indian bowler in the history of IPL Auction. Delhi Daredevils bought Irfan Pathan for 1.9 million dollars (which equates to 8.6 crore INR) for the 2011 IPL season. He also became the 3rd costliest Indian player in an IPL auction after Yuvraj Singh (16 cr in 2015 and 14 cr in 2014) and Dinesh Karthik (12.5 cr in 2014).

169 – The eight franchises bought a total of 169 players in this auction out of which 113 were Indian players and 56 being overseas. 91 out of 169 players were capped players while Sandeep Lamichhane been the only player from an Associate nation and the first player in the IPL from Nepal.

431.4 – The eight teams spent a total of 431.4 crore rupees in the 2018 IPL Player auction. KKR (80 cr) spent the highest while CSK (73.5 cr) spent the lowest among the eight franchises. Ben Stokes (12.5 cr) stood out as the most expensive player of the auction for the 2nd consecutive year.