Australia captain Pat Cummins has landed a record £1.94million contract at the Indian Premier League auction with England pair Harry Brook and Chris Woakes picking up deals worth just under £400,000.
Cummins sat out the 2023 tournament to focus on international cricket but became even hotter property after leading his side to the World Test Championship and last month’s 50-over World Cup on Indian soil.
Four teams vied for the fast bowler’s signature and Sunrisers Hyderabad ended up paying 20.5 crore rupees, eclipsing the previous high of 18.5 crore (£1.77m) Punjab Kings paid for English all-rounder Sam Curran last year.
Cummins, 30, had entered with a base price of just under £200,000 and saw the bidding war up his fee by a factor of 10.
Sunrisers had plenty of budget to play with having released Brook after one season of a £1.3m deal, with the Yorkshireman picking up a healthy but much-reduced payday with the Capitals.
He hit one superb century in his first IPL campaign but was otherwise badly short of runs with just 190 in 11 matches.
Woakes was later drafted for just under £400,000 by Punjab, joining his England team-mates Curran and Liam Livingstone.
Sunrisers also splurged on Cummins’ fellow Australian Travis Head, who capped a stellar year with a match-winning 137 in the World Cup final in Ahmedabad. He cost around £645,000 (6.8 crore) as he returned to the tournament for the first time since 2017.
West Indies T20 captain Rovman Powell was the first player to go under the hammer at the event in Dubai and fetched a surprisingly lavish £700,000 bid from Rajasthan Royals, while New Zealand all-rounder Daryl Mitchell scooped the biggest cheque of his career when he went to Chennai Super Kings for £1.3million.
CSK also signed Mitchell’s fellow Kiwi Rachin Ravindra, the breakout star of the World Cup, for a modest £170,000.
