3 February 2009

The final list for the IPL auction

The answer to the question of who would finally go up for IPL auction from the England players has been answered and the answer is:

England: Kevin Pietersen (1,350,000), Andrew Flintoff (950,000), Luke Wright (150,000), Owais Shah (150,000), Paul Collingwood (250,000), Ravi Bopara (150,000), Samit Patel (100,000).

Of those, Patel was publicised before but is still a little surprising as he hasn't done anything to speak of as a batsman in international cricket, and his bowling is average. Of the others Luke Wright might consider himself a little fortunate to have got this far having been dropped from the England side recently. Thankfully the list of all and sundry in English county cricket that was initially put forward has got trimmed down, but I feel a little sorry for James Foster who we've seen can change a Twenty20 game with his excellent keeping.

Looking outside of the England players, who is the bargain to be snapped up? You guessed it - my old friend Shakib Al-Hassan from Bangladesh. At $75,000 I'm telling you he's a bargain and looking at the prices, if he'd been from England he would have been worth about $400,000 - Samit Patel (who is roughly comparable in that he's a left-arm spinning all-rounder) worth more than him? Don't make me laugh!!

2 comments:

Muttley said...

Lokks like your mate from Bangladesh probably needs your services as his agent. You did a much better job of selling his talents to fellow Burblers than his agent to the IPL franchises!!

Ed said...

Absolutely! It was interesting to see how the franchises bid - it seemed to be totally inconsistent. €650k for Tyrone Henderson, €450k for Bopara I think it was, and not even a bid for Stuart Clark or Al-Hassan, who is currently ranked the best one day all-rounder in the ICC rankings! Al-Hassan's base price was only €75k so pennies compared to some - a chance missed by the franchises.

I'll see if I can get hold of him to offer my services as an agent!