IPL 2018 Auction: Preity Zinta feels depressed to miss out on an important player

After a couple of bridging and appealing days at the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2018 auction, it looks like that all the eight franchises have selected a certain core of players with which they would now look to ascertain their future combinations and compositions. In a quest to select the correct composition of players, Kings XI Punjab arrived at the auction event, after retaining a single player, left-arm spinner Axar Patel during the retentions.

The thought process and the initial mindset of all the officials of the Punjab franchise seated on the auction table looked to be quite clear, to say the least. They went all-out to compose their side with spinners and top-quality batsmen.

 Missed out on retaining him at the auction

Punjab retained three players at the auction by using each of their Right to Match (RTM) card option, as they included hard-hitting finishers like David Miller, Marcus Stoinis. They also brought back fast bowler Mohit Sharma via their third RTM card. The Kings XI owner and famous Bollywood actress Preity Zinta was seen as the most excited and active personality at the auction event. She looked quite keen to raise the bars when the screen showed some of the specialist players up for grabs. However, the bidding war that eventually broke out for Sandeep Sharma left Zinta with a distinctive frown.

Sharma was eventually bought by the Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 2018 auction for Rs 3 crores, while the Kings failed to retain him through the RTM card. The actress felt sad upon missing out on the speedster and seemed quite animated as a bidding war broke out for him. He has been the leading bowler for the Kings in the previous seasons and has always been a proper wicket-taking bowler for his skipper in every situation.

“The one thing I am heartbroken about it is having to miss out on Sandy (Sandeep Sharma). I was really sad to let him go but I was also excited to see that there was a bidding war for him. This is a great example of somebody who is amazing to work with, who is hard working and he gets rewarded for his hard work. So we might have missed out on him in the Kings XI Punjab squad but eventually, he is the big winner. So congratulations Sandy and I am going to miss you,” said Preity in a video on her twitter handle as quoted by Times Now.

Here’s the full KXIP squad