IPL Auction 2018: Rajasthan Royals deal for Jaydev Unadkat, Kings XI Punjab snap Chris Gayle

As auctioneer Richard Madley called the last name for auction on Sunday, there was just one team, Kolkata Knight Riders, which finished off its entire salary purse of Rs 80 crore. The other seven teams were still holding on to the purse despite 169 players being sold off in the two-day IPL auction.

The day, which saw uncapped Rajasthan leg-spinner Rahul Chahar bought by Mumbai Indians for 9.5 times his base price of Rs 20 lakh in the beginning, came to an end when Kings XI Punjab stunned everyone by stealing master blaster Chris Gayle from right under their noses for Rs 2 crore base price towards the closing stages.

This last-minute shopping completed Punjab outfit's formidable batting line-up including KL Rahul, Karun Nair, David Miller, Aaron Finch, Yuvraj Singh, Marcus Stoinis and Mayank Agarwal. More than that, it was a big relief for almost all the cricket fans who were worried about missing out on such a cult batting figure in the IPL.

The Preity Zinta-led team played this card at such a time when other teams either ran out of money or had exhausted their quota of eight overseas players. KXIP also walked away with Afghanistan's 16-year-old off-spinner, Mujeeb Zadran, to make him the youngest player in the IPL's history.

Another former champion bowler Mitchell Johnson also got lucky to be picked by Kolkata Knight Riders to share the new ball with his successor in his national team, Mitchell Starc.

Another big surprise of the day was big bang buying by Rajasthan Royals, who picked Karnataka all-rounder K Gowtham for Rs 6.20 crore against his base price of Rs 20 lakh.

However, the star of the day was India T20 left-arm pacer Jaydev Unadkat, who was bought for a whopping Rs 11.50 crore to become the costliest Indian across two days of auction.

Unadkat's last price in the IPL auctions in 2017 was a mere Rs 30 lakh by Rising Pune Supergiant. But it was his 24 wickets in the last IPL that created a huge interest this time around. Chennai Super Kings, KXIP and RR went after him. It was eventually Royals who stole Unadkat with the last call of Rs 11.5 crore.

There was again a huge demand for Afghanistan players as spinner Mujeeb Zadran attracted a pay cheque of Rs 4 crore from the Punjab outfit. He became the second most expensive player from this war-torn country after 19-year-old Rashid Khan was bought for Rs 9 crore a day earlier.

Mohammad Nabi was bought for Rs 1 crore by Sun Risers Hyderabad while another 19-year-old left-arm chinaman bowler Zahir Khan became the fourth Afghan player to picked after Royals called a bid of Rs 60 lakh.

The Sri Lankans, on the other hand, were not that lucky this time around. Only spinner Akila Dananjaya was picked for his base price of Rs 50 lakh by MI while speedster Dushmantha Chameera also got the similar price towards the end of the day.

Before this, MI managed to get the services of devastating opener Evin Lewis for a good price of Rs 3.8 crore.

New South African pace sensation Lungi Ngidi was traded for base price of Rs 50 lakh by CSK on a day when his senior pros Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn failed to attract a single bidder. CSK also later recalled experienced opener Murali Vijay.

JP Duminy was bit lucky to get back to his former employer, MI, for Rs 1 crore salary.

Virat Kohli-led side Royal Challengers Bangalore called for wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel along with budding spinners Washington Sundar and Murugan Ashwin. RCB already have Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Nathan-Coulter Nile and Tim Southee to share the bowling burden.

In all, DD were the first to complete the maximum squad number of 25, while KXIP were the last to reach the minimum of 18.

FULL SQUADS FOR IPL 2018

Royal Challengers Bangalore (Total money spent: Rs 79.85cr)
Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, Brendon McCullum, Tim Southee, Chris Woakes, Parthiv Patel, Umesh Yadav, Quinton de Kock, Manan Vohra, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Moeen Ali, Sarfaraz Khan, Kulwant Khejroliya, Mandeep Singh, Aniruddha Joshi, Pavan Deshpande, Yuzvendra Chahal, Aniket Choudhary, Murugan Ashwin, Pawan Negi, Colin de Grandhomme, Navdeep Saini, Washington Sundar, Mohammed Siraj

Kolkata Knight Riders (Total money spent: Rs 80cr)
Piyush Chawla, Robin Uthappa, Shubman Gill, Mitchell Johnson, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Dinesh Karthik, Mitchell Starc, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Shivam Mavi, Javon Searles, Ishank Jaggi, Cameron Delport, Chris Lynn, R Vinay Kumar, Apoorv Wankhade, Kuldeep Yadav, Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh

Chennai Super Kings (Total money spent: Rs 73.5cr)
MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Shane Watson, Murali Vijay, Kedar Jadhav, Harbhajan Singh, Faf du Plessis, Dwayne Bravo, Lungi Ngidi, Sam Billings, Karn Sharma, Ambati Rayudu, Mark Wood, Jagadeesan Narayan, Imran Tahir, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, Mitchell Santner, Dhruv Shorey, Kshitiz Sharma, Chaitanya Bishnoi, Monu Kumar, Kanishk Seth, Asif KM

Delhi Daredevils (Total money spent: Rs 78.4cr)
Gautam Gambhir, Jason Roy, Glenn Maxwell, Mohammed Shami, Prithvi Shaw, Trent Boult, Amit Mishra, Shahbaz Nadeem, Naman Ojha, Abhishek Sharma, Manjot Kalra, Colin Munro, Harshal Patel, Rahul Tewatia, Jayant Yadav, Vijay Shankar, Daniel Christian, Gurkeerat Singh, Kagiso Rabada, Avesh Khan, Sayan Ghosh, Sandeep Lamichhane, Chris Morris, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant

Mumbai Indians (Total money spent: Rs 79.35cr)
Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, Kieron Pollard, JP Duminy, Krunal Pandya, Pat Cummins, Rahul Chahar, Anukul Roy, Tajinder Singh, Mayank Markande, Mohsin Khan, Ben Cutting, Jason Behrendorff, Pradeep Sangwan, Mustafizur Rahman, Aditya Tare, Saurabh Tiwary, Siddhesh Lad, Evin Lewis, Suryakumar Yadav, Akila Dananjaya, Ishan Kishan, Sharad Lumba, MD Nidheesh

Rajasthan Royals (Total money spent: Rs 78.35cr)
Ajinkya Rahane, Steven Smith, Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, Sanju Samson, Aryaman Birla, Midhun S, Stuart Binny, Dhawal Kulkarni, D’Arcy Short, Ben Laughlin, Jatin Saxena, Shreyas Gopal, Anureet Singh, Jaydev Unadkat, Ankit Sharma, Gowtham Krishnappa, Rahul Tripathi, Prashant Chopra, Dushmantha Chameera, Jofra Archer, Zahir Khan, Mahipal Lomror

Kings XI Punjab (Total money spent: Rs 79.9cr)
Yuvraj Singh, R Ashwin, Karun Nair, KL Rahul, Chris Gayle, Aaron Finch, David Miller, Mayank Agarwal, Mujeeb Zadran, Manzoor Dar, Marcus Stoinis, Pardeep Sahu, Manoj Tiwary, Andrew Tye, Akshdeep Nath, Mohit Sharma, Barinder Sran, Ankit Rajpoot, Ben Dwarshuis, Mayank Dagar, Axar Patel

Sunrisers Hyderabad (Total money spent: Rs 79.35cr)
 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, David Warner, Kane Williamson, Wriddhiman Saha, Shikhar Dhawan, Yusuf Pathan, Shakib Al Hasan, Chris Jordan, Manish Pandey, Shreevats Goswami, Siddarth Kaul, Bipul Sharma, Sachin Baby, Sandeep Sharma, Carlos Brathwaite, Mehdi Hasan, Deepak Hooda, Billy Stanlake, Ricky Bhui, Basil Thampi, Tanmay Agarwal, Rashid Khan, Natarajan, Syed Khaleel Ahmed, Mohammad Nabi