South African batter Tristan Stubbs emerged the most expensive buy following a bidding war that saw Sunrisers Eastern Cape paying a whopping 9.2 million rand (USD 500,000 plus) for his services at the inaugural auction of the SA T20 league in Cape Town on Monday.
The SA T20 league is scheduled to be held in January-February next year and consists of six teams owned by Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises.
The six teams include MI Cape Town (Reliance), Pretoria Capitals (JSW), Paarl Royals (Royals Sports Group), Durban Super Giants (RPG-Sanjiv Goenka), Johannesburg Super Kings (India Cements), Sunrisers Eastern Cape (Sunrisers Hyderabad owner Kaviya Maran).
With each team being allowed a salary cap of R 34 million (USD 1.9 million approx, INR 15 crore), the auction witnessed intense bidding for the 22-year-old Stubbs, who plies his trade with Mumbai Indians in the IPL.
MI Cape Town made the initial move for the young and explosive Proteas batter followed by Paarl Royals.
However, as the bidding price shot up, Johannesburg Super Kings and Sunrisers Eastern Cape entered the fray, engaging in an intense battle. Sunrisers eventually won the bid at for the sought-out youngster at R 9.2 million.
"I am still shaking," was Stubbs' first reaction.
The other big buy for Sunrisers was their own IPL player -- left-arm pacer Marco Jansen for R 6.1 million (USD 344,000). One of the other notable gainers was left-handed batter Rilee Rossouw, who laughed his way to the bank with a R 6.9 million (USD 390,000 approx) bid from Pretoria Capitals.
Among the known players, Lungi Ngidi got R 3.4 million (USD 191,000 USD) while Tabraiz Shamsi got a bid of R 4.3 million (242,000 USD) from the same franchise.
The hard-hitting Heinrich Klaasen was picked by Durban Super Giants for R 4.5 million (USD 252,000) while Keshav Maharaj got R 2.5 million (USD 141,000) from Sanjiv Goenka's team.
Johannesburg Super Kings picked up England batter Dawid Malan for R 2.7 million (USD 152,000) and hard-hitting youngster Harry Brook for R 2.1 million (USD 118,000).
The big names that went unsold include World Cup-winning England captain Eoin Morgan, South African ODI captain Temba Bavuma and the Asia Cup-winning opening pair from Sri Lanka, Kusal Mendis and Pathum Nissanka.
(With inputs from PTI)
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