Faded former IPL star gets a contract in the Mumbai T20 League

Six franchises spent fancy amounts to snap up Mumbai’s top players for the inaugural season of the Mumbai T20 League, to be played from 11 to 21 March at the Wankhede Stadium. A land that has historically produced the best batsmen for the national team, the T20 extravaganza promises to be an exciting affair and also being touted as the next big thing after the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the country.

Also, this is not the first region-specific T20 tournament in the country as the likes of Tamil Nadu Premier League and Karnataka Premier League have already set the stage on fire for the respective states. Similarly, Mumbai T20 League is a great platform for the budding cricketers to display their prowess.

Out of limelight IPL star’s career-resurrecting opportunity 

The auction for the tournament was held at the St Regis on Saturday in Mumbai. Among the biggest buys were Rohit Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane and Suryakumar Yadav. Some of the lesser-known players from the Mumbai circuit also got good contracts at the auctions.

Paul Valthaty, who last played IPL in 2013, was sold to Mumbai South Central at his base price of Rs 50,000. He hasn’t played any competitive game since 2013, which was also the year he played his last IPL game. The batsman had grabbed limelight in the 2011 auctions in which he scored 463 runs in 12 games. However, he eventually couldn’t get going much after that, before seeing no bidders for him in the 2013 auctions.

India internationals go big 

Ajinkya Rahane and Suryakumar Yadav were sold at Rs. 7 lakh each, while Rohit Sharma was bought for Rs. 6 lakhs. Shreyas Iyer was snapped up by Mumbai North Central for Rs. 5 lakhs, while Prithvi Shaw, who will not be available for a large part of the tournament, was nevertheless bought by Mumbai North for Rs. 2.80 lakhs. Shardul Thakur, who recently took a four-wicket haul against South Africa, will also miss the tournament as he is with the Indian team for the tri-series in Sri Lanka. The short tournament, with six teams, promises to be an interesting contest.

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