England white-ball captain Eoin Morgan, who had captained the Kolkata Knight Riders last season remained unsold in the IPL 2022 auction.
Just like the previous editions, the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises once again broke the bank for some of the biggest names in world cricket at the recently-concluded IPL auction last week. While some players were roped in for whopping amounts, some players failed to find buyers. England white-ball captain Eoin Morgan, who had captained the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) last season, remained unsold despite multiple rounds of bidding. Speaking on his YouTube channel, former Pakistan captain Salman Butt said he was surprised to see the likes of Morgan failing to get any buyer.
Comparing him with West Indies batter Nicholas Pooran, who was sold for Rs 10.75 crore to the SunRisers Hyderabad despite failing to impress in the last season, Butt said that luck wasn’t on Morgan’s side.
“There are a lot of titleholders that are missing from the IPL. Dawid Malan, who was the no.1 T20I batter in the world for a long time, isn’t there in any team. Aaron Finch and Eoin Morgan aren’t there either. Last year, Morgan was the captain of KKR. He wasn’t as lucky as Pooran as both had similar performances last year. But Pooran bagged more than 10 crore and he went unsold,” Butt said on his YouTube channel.
“Another player was Tabraiz Shamsi. He has been bowling very well in international cricket for quite some time now and he didn’t get picked either. Martin Guptill did not get picked by any team as well. Some players will feel hard-done-by but this is the nature of the auction and these sorts of things are bound to happen,” he added.
Meanwhile, Ishan Kishan emerged as the most expensive player as he was bought by the Mumbai Indians for Rs 15.25 crore.
England’s Liam Livingstone, on the other hand, was the most expensive overseas buy after Punjab Kings splashed Rs 11.5 crore for him.
