New Delhi - India's one-day cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni fetched the highest price of 1.5 million dollars during the first-ever player auction in the game's history held in India's Mumbai city on Wednesday. Seventy-seven international cricketers went under the hammer in the auction in which eight city franchises made bids for the services of some of cricket's biggest names for the Indian Premier League inaugural Twenty20 tournament.
The tournament, sanctioned by the International Cricket Council, will be played from April 18 to June 1 and features teams from New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Jaipur, Chennai, Chandigarh and Hyderabad.
Dhoni fetched a higher price than other top cricketers including Ausralian captain Ricky Ponting and Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan as the Chennai franchise made the bid to win the Indian skipper.
"Mr M S Dhoni has been won by Chennai for 1.5 million dollars. Mr Adam Gilchrist (Australian wicketkeeper batsman) was brought by Hyderabad for 700,000 dollars," IPL Chairman and Commissioner Lalit Modi said, giving details of the bidding.
Dhoni was closely trailed by Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds who was bought by the Hyderabad team for 1.35 million dollars.
Symonds was lately in the middle of a controversy during the recent India-Australia series, when he charged Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh with racial abuse.
The bidding which was done electronically in a sealed room also saw the Mumbai team pick up Singh for 850,000 dollars and Sri Lankan batsman Sanath Jayasuriya for 975,000 dollars.
The total value of the auction is estimated at 40 million dollars since each team has a budget of 5 million dollars for a maximum of eight overseas players. The contract will be for three years.
The auction, which was attended by Indian cricket heroes Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid as well as Bollywood film-stars Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta who own two franchises, is expected to continue till Wednesday evening.
During the auctioning, South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis and Australian paceman Brett Lee were bought for 900,000 dollars each.
Australian Ponting was bought for 400,000 dollars, West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle went for 800,000 dollars, former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming for 350,000 dollars and South African batsman Herschelle Gibbs for 575,000 dollars.
Among Pakistani cricketers, all-rounder Shahid Afridi will play for the Hyderabad team for 675,000 dollars and bowler Mohammad Asif was picked up for 650,000 dollars.
"There is wonderful drama (during the bidding). It is for the first time that the market is determining the price of cricketers ... and that is how a free market economy should flow," senior IPL official Inderjit Bindra told reporters.
According to the IPL, international cricketers from cricketing nations including India, Australia, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe and West Indies were up for grabs at the auction.
England was the only leading cricketing nation which has chosen to stay away as its players have cited a busy domestic season ahead.
Local media outlets reported that the financial scale of the IPL tournament has been unprecedented at the Twenty20 level of cricket. Twenty20 is a shorter format of the one-day form of cricket which has grown in popularity in the cricket world.
According to reports, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which is organizing the tournament, has already made close to 1.75 billion dollars solely from the sale of TV rights, promotion and franchises.
