Former Pakistan cricket team star Basit Ali was all praise for Rishabh Pant and said that the India wicket-keeper batter should be sold for Rs 50 crore in the IPL 2025 Auction. Pant was the only shining light in India’s performance as they slumped to a massive loss against New Zealand in the third Test encounter in Mumbai. Following the loss, Basit said that Pant looked the track look ‘flat’ when he was batting and said that although media reports are claiming that he can go for Rs 25 crore in the auction, his shot selection puts him in another level and the bidding for him should go up to Rs 50 crore.
“Rishabh Pant scored 60 in the first innings and 64 in the second. What can I say about this kid? People say he should go for INR 25 crore in the IPL auction. However, I think he should be sold for INR 50 crore. When he batted on this pitch, it seemed like a flat track. He hit wherever he wanted to but his shot selection was good,” Basit said on his YouTube channel.
With stars like Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul up for grabs, many IPL team owners will be rubbing their hands in glad anticipation at the upcoming players’ auction which promises to create all-time record deals given the available Indian talent in the pool.
Aside from Pant and Rahul, there will be Shreyas Iyer, Arshdeep Singh, Washington Sundar, Mohammed Siraj and Mohammed Shami also in the auction pool.
All of them can trigger bidding wars but let there be no confusion that Pant will be cynosure of all eyes at the two-day event supposed to be held in third week of December.
The Rs 75 crore retention cap on international players coupled with Right To Match cards will certainly make it an intriguing auction as some teams, which have exhausted their retention quotas, will now have to recruit at least 15 more players for a lesser sum.
But a few others like Punjab Kings (Rs 110.5 crore) and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (Rs 83 crore) will be making some insane bids.
Never before in an auction has one witnessed three IPL captains back in the pool — Pant of Delhi Capitals, defending champions KKR’s Iyer and Lucknow Super Giants’ KL Rahul.
In case of Pant, more than money, he was not happy about his powers being curbed by GMR, the co-owners, who will run the show for the next two years. He was also, it is learnt, not happy with Hemang Badani as head coach and Y Venugopal Rao as Team Director.
(With PTI inputs)
