5 Expensive buys who faded away in IPL history

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is the most renowned T20 tournament across the globe. It is a platform where the players are not bound by the boundaries of their nations and the legends of two countries can feature in the same team. But beyond the stellar foreign imports, young Indian players are also given the chance to shine on the big stage, learning from the greats of the game.

What attracts the players most to this T20 league is its lucrative contracts. The IPL auction has always been full of surprises as sometimes an unknown player goes for a staggering amount while an international player with a great track record goes unsold. The franchises usually don’t hold themselves back in shelling out huge amounts of money to get their desired player into the team.

However, money is not a guarantee to success. Time and again we have seen many players who bagged lucrative contracts in the auction and made headlines but couldn’t do justice to the money. While some have proved their mettle and went on to play for their country and bag even better contracts, others have slowly fizzled away from our memory.

Here we bring you 5 expensive players in the auction who faded away:

1. Tyron Henderson – Rs 4.8 crore (IPL 2009)

The hype for this South African all-rounder compelled the IPL franchise Rajasthan Royals to place big bets on him. RR bought him for a price of Rs. 4.8 crores ($ 650,000) in 2009. Back then, Henderson was hailed as the next ‘Andrew Flintoff‘ and also featured in BBC’s list of “five players to look out for”.

Despite grabbing a lucrative IPL contract, the batting all-rounder featured in just two IPL matches. In the two matches played, he failed to make a mark as he could score only 11 runs and took only one wicket. Tyron made his bowling debut against Royal Challengers Bangalore with an unimpressive spell of 4-0-30-1, his only IPL wicket being Kevin Pietersen.

Henderson was released by Royals the following year and could never make his comeback in the league again. With these stats, the Proteas cricketer can be considered as one of the most expensive flops in the history of the T20 league.