Most expensive buys of IPL 10 and their contribution to the teams so far

The 10th edition of the IPL was in the limelights well before the tournament commenced. A lot of eyes were on the players’ auction where a number of players including several new ones were available to be bagged. The team owners had done their homework and tried to plug the gaps in their squads. There was a huge demand for overseas bowlers and consequently, those were the ones who emerged as the costliest picks of the season.

After all that, the action finally began on April 5th and all the big buys were under the scrutiny and everyone wanted to see how they perform. There was certainly an added pressure on those players as the burden of expectations was immense. But did they manage to live up to the anticipations?

Let’s have a look at the top 5 picks of the auction and how they performed so far in the league.

#1 Ben Stokes

The biggest talk of the town before the auction was Ben Stokes who was set to appear in the league for the first time ever. The world had seen his skills with both bat and ball across formats. He caught the eye of the franchises after his top performance on the tour to India just before the auction. Regarded as one of the best all-rounders in the world right now, he was bought by Rising Pune Supergiant for a whopping INR 14.5 crores that made him the costliest pick of the season.

Performance so far

In the first match against Mumbai Indians, he had figures of 36/1 and contributed 21 with the bat. Although it didn’t make a daunting impact in his team’s victory, yet it was a decent start. In the next game against Kings XI Punjab, he scored a fifty but that ended up in a losing cause. It was followed by two not so good outings and he was under pressure to deliver the goods.

His best performance so far came against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the next game where he bagged 3 wickets for 18 runs that helped his side pull off a thumping win. But he had another dismal show in the recent match against Sunrisers Hyderabad where he didn’t have a substantial contribution in both departments of the game.

Overall, if we look at his numbers so far, he is averaging only 18.33 with the bat and has just one score of fifty to his name. In the bowling area as well, he doesn’t have impressive numbers and has accounted for only 4 scalps and went for 7.81 runs per over. The record isn’t too bad but not too good either. It’s just that the amount of money spent on him was huge and consequently, he will be under the hammer throughout the season and needs to do plenty more to do justice to the price tag.

What hasn’t worked for him is that RPS side doesn’t have a great bowling line-up especially in the pace department. He is the sole foreign fast bowler in the XI and finds himself bowling the crucial overs more often than not. While batting, the string failures of Dhoni had put him under pressure and certainly, he is not the best in the business when it comes to finishing the games.

Price: INR 14.5 crores

Batting Stats

Bowling Stats

Player Rating: 5/10