Jeddah: Five-time IPL champions Mumbai Indians were amongst the slow starters in the ongoing IPL 2025 mega auction in Jeddah and went on to pick four players on day one of the proceedings.
Head coach Mahela Jayawardene stated there is a lot of talent in the auction pool and the team is looking to make their picks wisely. On day one of the auction, MI roped in Trent Boult (INR 12.50 crore), Naman Dhir (INR 5.25 crore), Robin Minz (Rs 65 lakh) and Karn Sharma (Rs 50 lakh), and have a remaining purse of Rs 21.6 crore.
“It was an amazing auction in the sense that we knew what was going to happen. When we saw the list of players, that it’s two halves to this auction. So we knew that if we’re doing this route, we have to be patient. There’s another 400 or more players on the list. So we could pick and choose and there’s a lot of talent that we’re going to pick wisely,” said Jayawardene in a video posted on the franchise’s social media accounts.
He also said having a lot of purse ahead of day two’s proceedings gives them a lot of authority in terms of how they want to go about their plans. “Because at the end of the day, the auction is not just for the players that are in the auction and the purses that we have, it’s to the players that we retain, the value that we put into those players.
“To be in that situation where we are in the top 3 in purses going into day 2 and at the same time we secured nine slots in our playing XI that gives us a lot of comfort in how we want to execute.
Boult and Dhir have been in the MI set-up previously, and Jayawardene signed off by saying the franchise has taken into account the factor of forming the team around their five retained players – Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma.
“It’s the players that we have retained, we have a lot of faith in those players. They are world-class players and we need to understand that. We need to value these five players that we retained. The five players that we retained, if they were in the auction, what price would they have gone? So we need to take that into account first and from that onwards we have to bid,” he said.
–IANS
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