Popular auctioneer Richard Madley has opened up on his 11-year experience hosting the IPL auction as he recalled lots of memories with various franchises. Madley hosted the IPL auction from 2008 to 2018.
Speaking to Ravichandran Ashwin on his Youtube channel, Madley recalled how the Chennai Super Kings won the bidding war to get MS Dhoni for $1.5 mn. Notable that Dhoni was the new poster boy of Indian cricket then as he won the T20 World Cup for India a few months ago. And since all the top players- Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, and Yuvraj Singh were named ‘iconic players’ and were out of the auction so Dhoni was a hot favourite pick for all the teams.
Richard Madley hosted the IPL auction for 11 years
Speaking about the same 2008 auction, Madley recalls how Rajasthan Royals got a steal in form of Shane Warne.
“I remember the second player coming out of the bag that day was Shane Warne. I thought okay here’s Warnie and this will be interesting, his base price was I think around 400000 US dollars. That’s what he sold for at his base price to Rajasthan Royals and I thought at that time that was a smart move,” Richard Madley said.
Royals gave Shane the dual responsibility of captain and coach as he led a young team to win the inaugural edition.
Madley further observed Rajasthan Royals as the coolest bidders on the auction table as they never get too excited.
“For the next 10 years, I watched Rajasthan Royals be the coolest bidders in the room. They never got excited, Manoj Badale was just cool and a pattern started to emerge. Then out of the bag came the man himself, the ultimate all-rounder Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and there we saw the first bidding war of many in the IPL auctions,” he added.
IPL 2022 auction is set to place on February 12 and 13 in Bengaluru when 590 cricketers will go under the hammer. Hugh Edmeades, who took over from Richard Madley in 2019 will continue to host the event.
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