Maxwell remains one of the legends in T20 cricket, despite his poor record so far with the IPL. So that price tag is rather justified. But imagine this - 2.20 crore for Steve Smith, who is one of the legends in cricket and almost double that amount for the relatively unknown Shivam Dube. And some of the very good players have gone unsold till now - Karun Nair, Alex Hales, Jason Roy, Evin Lewis and Aaron Finch. BTW, I am not much surprised with the lack of interest for Hanuma Vihari and Kedar Jadhav.

Bidding war initiated for Chris Morris right now.. teams are going all out to purchase the player whom they have targeted. First the bidding war was between Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore, but later other teams also joined in later. Finally he was sold to Rajasthan Royals for a massive 16.25 crore.

Jhye Richardson doesn't have a regular slot in the Australian national side and he was purchased by Kings XI Punjab for 14.00 crore. I guess the fact that he is not a part of the national side would have worked to his advantage. It also means that he is available for the entire duration of the tournament. Perhaps this is the reason why players such as Smith and Shakib received such low bids. Bowlers and all rounders seems to be in good demand, compared to the batsmen.

This time the auctions really surprised me. The teams had made their targets before the auctions and went hard for those targeted players during the bidding. Many of these teams had sizable purse and they were ready to splurge as much as $2 million on good players. But I am perplexed about why players such as Roy, Carey, Finch and Lewis went unsold. They are among the best T20 batsmen in the world.

Richardson and Nathan Coulter-Nile went for good amounts, but Sheldon Cottrell was not that lucky. His IPL career is essentially over, destroyed by Lord Tewatia.

CSK again invested in the older players, even they bought Pujara but don't know the actual reason for doing it because they don't have any spot for him to play. And bought K.Gowtham which also not convincing as CSK player because I thought they would buy someone who can be a match-winner like watto. The good thing is they bought Moeen Ali but they already have Jaddu so going to play with two All-rounders?

Only out of respect, it was good gesture from all the franchise when everyone appreciated the buy. Unfortunate that Hanuma Vihari went unsold, he took a few hit on body for team India in recent series, he could be bought on base price but it seems everyone ran out of money and slots.

Next year new team is coming so get ready for more bid war for everyone.

Think about Josh Hazelwood. Poor guy is his teammate. Pujara already bored him to death in last 2 series now he's up against him in the nets.

Even Pujara didn't expect such scenario,

IPL is helping the players to build a good friendship from all over the world and also it exposes the strength and weakness via nets and IPL to the international matches.

I am quite surprised with the inclusion of Glenn Maxwell. He is regarded as a good T20 player, but his record with IPL is not that great. On top of that, his performance in the recently concluded BBL was not also up to the mark. It was Hales, Vince, Philippe and Lynn who got the runs and ironically almost none of them got selected in yesterday's auctions. The franchises went for the "tried and tested" players rather than giving chance to youngsters.

Chennai was plagued with slow starts during the last year's tournament. They need someone who is explosive at the start. Moeen is explosive, but he is more like a bowler who can bat a bit. CSK believes that he can play the role that Sunil Narine has with the KKR. But it needs to be seen, if things work out like that. I have always believed that Moeen is a player who is more suitable for ODI format than T20.

CSK needs to pay attention towards the middle order as well. A lot of times during the past season, they lost matches while batting second. Slow batting by Kedar Jadhav, and to an extent that from Mahendra Singh Dhoni can be attributed to this. If that is the case, the I have a feeling that Moeen may be more suitable for the middle or lower middle order. 

Glenn Maxwell can make a difference if he is gets the freedom and motivation and with Kohli and AB de Villiers in the team he might get that freedom and help to perform in Indian pitches.

CSK needs a good striker and who is opening the innings and Faf du Plessis is coming at one down in the last season and i am not sure who will be opening with Watson gone and i am expecting Moeen Ali to be the right replacement and he will make a difference.

FAF at 5 is a waste of his talent. He is well suited at opening or one down. As rain will be back which means he will play at 3, which will actually disrupt the balance of this side.

As Rayudu performed so well when he opened in 2018, proper use of his potential is also been jeopardize because of the uncertainty of his batting position.

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My potential side......

moen                                                                 
faf                                                                     
raydu                                                                 
ruturaj
raina
dhoni
jadeja
sam curran/ bravo
deepak
shradul
imran tahir


Want to add Hazlewood on fastpitch but don't know how because I want Imran to play, he is an X- factor to this side.

The auction looked like some sort of favoring the players they like the most, reject good players while paying huge amount of money to players who never performed well in the IPL like Steven Smith and Glen Maxwell and Piyush Chawla and Harbhajan Singh getting big amounts as well and they are not playing international cricket for along time while neglecting some youngsters and the most controversy will be the inclusion of Arjun Tendulkar and there are talks of nepotism popping up again  .