Veteran Australian batter David Warner on Wednesday discovered that he has been blocked by his old franchise – SunRisers Hyderabad – on Instagram. The former SRH captain, who led the franchise to their only title win in 2016, took to the photo-sharing app to repost his teammate Travis Head’s post, who was picked by the SRH in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 auctions for INR 6.8 crore. However, Warner couldn’t repost Head’s story and realized that he had been blocked by the franchise on Instagram.
Warner then scrolled the SRH Instagram handle and found out that the franchise had restricted him from checking out their posts. Hence, he could only tag his teammates – Head and Pat Cummins – for bagging phenomenal IPL deals.
The Australians turned out to be the hottest properties at the mini-auction in Dubai on Saturday. After captain Pat Cummins bagged a lucrative deal of INR 20.40 crore from the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), ace pacer Mitchell Stark shattered all records to become the costliest player in the history of the tournament with a deal worth INR 24.75 crore from the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR).
Not long after Cummins fetched an unprecedented pay packet of 20.50 crore from Sunrisers Hyderabad, Starc raised the bar when Kolkata Knight Riders made a multimillion-dollar bid for the left-arm pacer who last played in the IPL in 2015.
An intense bidding war followed for Cummins with Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Chennai Super Kings, and Sunrisers Hyderabad raising their paddles frenetically to secure the services of the fast-bowling all-rounder.
In the end, it was SRH who broke the bank for Cummins, who drew the highest-ever bid surpassing the Rs 18.5 crore that Punjab Kings had shelled out for England’s Sam Curran last year.
Such are the unpredictable ways of IPL that one of the formidable Australian pace trio, Josh Hazlewood and former captain Steve Smith went unsold in the first round of auction from a base price of Rs 2 crore.
(With Agency Inputs)
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