IPL 2018: Unsold playing XI from the auction

All the eight squads are set to battle it out in the upcoming edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) after the mega-auctions took place over the weekend. There was an intense bidding war for certain players like Ben Stokes and Jaydev Unadkat who eventually became two of the most expensive players during the event. KL Rahul and Manish Pandey followed them as the franchises sought their services for the 2018 season. However, there were a few prominent players who surprisingly didn’t attract any bids and won’t take part in the Indian T20 league.

A total of 169 players were sold out of a whopping 578 players who went under the hammer. A lot of players going unsold also raised a few eyebrows as franchises made it clear that they were going for current form over reputation. The legend of the shortest format Chris Gayle too was picked by Kings XI Punjab at the last moment when his name popped up for the third time in the auction. But there were many others who deserved an IPL contract this year.

Given the fact that most of the overseas players went unsold during the auction, the basic criterion of only 4 overseas players has not taken into consideration in this XI.

Here we bring you the best playing XI of unsold players from the IPL auction 2018:

1. Lendl Simmons

Lendl Simmons, the aggressive cricketer from Windies, is surely one of the destructive openers going around in the T20 cricket. It was a surprise that his previous franchise, Mumbai Indians, didn’t even bid for him. Though it could be argued that his base price of Rs. 1.5 Crore was a bit too high for the likings of the teams. But Simmons is always a risk worth taking as he will win you the matches more often than not on his day.

He has scored 1079 runs in 29 matches so far in IPL at an amazing average of 39.96 and strike rate of 126.64. The right-handed batsman has also slammed a century and as many as 11 half-centuries in limited outings during the league. The fact that he endured a poor run last year went against him and was not shown any interest by any of the teams.