The Virtual IPL auctions are all about big bucks, hot bids and plenty of action. All the auctions over the years have been action-packed and players have walked away with millions in their pocket. While few of these hot picks have turned out to be great buys for the franchises, the others were not as successful. Here in this article, we take a look at how the biggest buys affected the franchises.
Virtual IPL Auction is a platform where people build squads and bid for their favourite players that go under the hammer. It has been modelled on the actual IPL Auctions that happen every year. The Virtual IPL Auction 2020 took place via Google Meets on the 1st and 2nd August of 2020. It was a relatively small auction with only 8 franchises bidding during the auction. Each Franchise was allowed to have a minimum of 6 overseas player and a maximum of 7 overseas players. The Franchises were allowed total purse money of 120 crores along with the power to use two RTMs ( Right to Match) cards.
The idea behind Virtual IPL Auction was to connect cricket enthusiasts in their passion for the beautiful sport of cricket. It was a bunch of friends who used to play auctions amongst themselves till they realized they could make it big, and involve more people. And that’s how Virtual IPL Auction came into existence.
This Virtual IPL auction 2020 season saw a total of 163 cricketers go under the hammer. The highest base price, for a selected group of players, was INR 7 crore. This list includes elite international cricketers like Jasprit Bumrah, MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, AB Devilliers, Kieron Pollard, Andre Russel, David Warner and Hardik Pandya.
The Auction being held across two days saw quite a few trades overnight as well as some before the Unsold players went under the hammer one last time. Some of the key trades included: Lasith Malinga traded from MI to CSK, Sunil Narine traded from RCB to KKR as well as Dale Steyn being traded by RCB to CSK.
The final few minutes of the auction saw some desperation from the franchises as they were all looking to fill their squads with the players of their choice but were constrained either by budget or rules or the RTM choices (feel sad for Delhi Daredevils).
After being denied the buy of Rishabh Pant, DD ended their Auction campaign with a lot of confusion and drama, finally choosing Manan Vohra over the likes of Deepak Hooda, Stuart Binny and Varun Chakravarthy.
The two day long process finally ended at around 8 on a Sunday evening, which was followed by the deliberation round carried out overnight on the Whatsapp group, with all the 8 teams sending in their Playing XI and Reserves list along with the Justification of their Squad choice.
After carefully analyzing all the teams and their ideas, the panel announced the season winners on the Whatsapp group later that evening.
Here are the top three most expensive players of this season:
Virat Kohli: Chennai Super Kings – Rs 23.2 crore
He was the hottest and the most expensive pick of this season of the IPL. It has been a superb acquisition as CSK knocked out all other Franchise.
MS Dhoni: Chennai Super Kings – Rs 22.5 crore
MS Dhoni was snapped up by Chennai Super Kings which was a big fish in bagging then the first place with such a tremendous captain.
AB Devilliers: Royal Challengers Bangalore – Rs 20.5 crore
The South African cricketer was the hottest pick of RCB that cost them an arm and a leg. This acquisition helped the team score 84.66 points.
Here’s a list of the top three teams from the auction:
Chennai Super Kings:
With 87.41 points CSK was the winner of Virtual IPL auction 2020 represented by Naveen, Kushal and Amol. It was an action pact drama to bid against the other franchises in scoring the first place and snapping two of the most expensive players of this season.
Mumbai Indians:
The second-place bagged by Mumbai Indians represented by Vaibhav, Satvik, Harshvardhan with 86.83. The Mumbai Indians team gave a hard competition to CSK.
Sunrisers Hyderabad:
The third-place bagged by Sunrisers Hyderabad represented by Saketh, Aaryaman, Kshitij with 85.58 points.
Apart from the Top 3 teams, Delhi Daredevils ( Tanishk, Abrar and Raghav ) as well as Kolkata Knight Riders ( Neeraj, Aakash and Deepak ) bagged the Honorable Mention awards.
All in all it was a very entertaining and fun packed two and a half days of the event. Looking forward to future editions of the same too.
Follow @manipaldigest and @virtual.ipl.auction for latest updates.
Please provide more details on how the virtual ipl auction was conducted
The Virtual IPL Auction is organised by a group of Manipal students, using Google Meets as a platform. A Whatsapp group is created with all the franchises for the communication purpose. For more details contact 9632422477.