Ipl 2026 auction why csk spent heavily on youth and kkr on overseas performers

Ipl 2026 auction why csk spent heavily on youth and kkr on overseas performers

To put the IPL mini-auction in a nutshell, it was an afternoon where Kolkata Knight Riders and Chennai Super Kings, entering the table with a purse of Rs 64.30 crore and Rs 43.40 crore respectively, shook the room in Abu Dhabi. Among the top six buys on Tuesday evening, five came from their table.

The prices told a story in itself. Top eight buys were Cameron Green (KKR, Rs 25.30 crore), Matheesha Pathirana (KKR, Rs 18 Cr), Kartik Sharma (CSK Rs 14.20 Cr), Prashant Veer (CSK Rs 14.20), Liam Livingstone (SRH, Rs 13 Cr), Mustafizur Rahman (KKR, Rs 9.20 Cr), Josh Inglis (LSG, 8.60 Cr), and Auqib Nabi (DC, Rs 8.40 Cr). A mix of overseas players, who are far from proven consistent performers and uncapped Indians who are unknown commodity but franchises willing to take a gigantic leap of faith.

With the demand and supply mismatch being evident, Australia’s Green broke the record for costliest overseas player, with KKR buying him for Rs 25.30 crore. Chennai, which has been a franchise that always banked on experience and proven names, chose a paradigm shift, investing in uncapped Indian players, headlined by 19-year-old Kartik and 20-year-old Prashant. At Rs 14.20 crore each, they are the most expensive uncapped players in IPL history. While all eyes were on KKR and CSK, the rest of the franchises, which came with the purpose of filling the holes, would now head back a happy bunch. The next IPL can’t come any sooner.

Day-(K)night gap

The 64.50 crore in Kolkata made a huge difference for them. For a franchise that splurged Rs 24.75 crore for Mitchell Starc and Rs 23.75 crore on Venkatesh Iyer in the last two auctions, they once again went all out in pursuit of Green, who was lined up as a replacement for Andre Russell. It is a franchise that doesn’t hesitate to spend a majority of its purse on starters and the trend continued. They didn’t stop there, with their death bowling resources being weak, and an area to address, they set their eyes on Pathirana. Despite being injury-prone and struggling for form, KKR believe reuniting him with their mentor Dwayne Bravo could give him a fresh start.

That Delhi, Lucknow Super Giants were also in the race for a bowler still finding his feat said how franchises were desperate to have a pacer with X-factor even keeping the cons in mind. At Rs 15.20 crore, the price did come as a surprise, but KKR did seem to have a back-up plan in place. For Plan B, they have the Bangladeshi seamer Mustafizur Rahman, who generated interest from CSK before they landed him for Rs 9.20 crore. Once the trio were in, they managed to fill their holes with Finn Allen, Rachin Ravindra, Tim Seifert and Rahul Tripathi at their base price.

CSK: Dad’s Army to Gen Z

Having finished rock bottom, CSK treaded a path they had never taken before. Having assembled a trial session way earlier than the rest of the franchises, in September, they chose to press the reset button in their approach with their eyes firmly on uncapped domestic talent. The signs had come midway through last season when they invested in youth. This auction, they went further. After going for Green, they stopped pursuing Ravi Bishnoi when the bid touched Rs 6 crore. Once the uncapped players came up, they didn’t keep the paddle down until they landed both their top targets, Veer and Kartik. An Indian spinner missing, Rahul Chahar was bought for Rs 5.20 crore before the likes of Akeal Hosein, Matthew Short, Matt Henry, Sarfaraz Khan, Zakary Foulkes and Aman Khan were grabbed at base price.

“As the game has evolved, we might have been a little bit slow to evolve with it,” CSK head coach Stephen Fleming admitted. “Sometimes you can hang on to theories and philosophies because of past success but we identified that we needed to shift and partly the work that we did last season halfway through has enabled us to continue that work done,” he explained their new strategy.

Targets land

KKR and CSK going hard on their targets meant that the rest were able to land their targets with minimum fuss. Delhi Capitals, for instance, got Ben Duckett and David Miller, both at base price. Lucknow got lucky with Anrich Nortje and Wanindu Hasaranga, but their winning bid for Inglis, who could miss majority of the season, for Rs 8.60 Cr raised eyebrows.

Defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru, having missed Venkatesh Iyer, bought him for Rs 7 Cr alongside left-arm uncapped pacer Mangesh Yadav from Madhya Pradesh. Rajasthan Royals added Ravi Bishnoi for Rs 7.20 crore, while Sunrisers Hyderabad threw a surprise by landing Livingstone for Rs 13 crore. Punjab Kings needed back-ups and got it in the form of Ben Dwarshuis and Cooper Connolly. Even Mumbai Indians, which entered the auction with just Rs 2.75 crore, got Quinton de Kock and four uncapped players.

It was a rare evening in Abu Dhabi, where all 10 franchises arrived with plans, executed them and returned all smiles.