Saina, Wei get highest bid

World No 1 men’s player Lee Chong Wei and World No 3 women’s player Saina Nehwal emer­ged the costliest buys at the Indian Badminton League (IBL) auctions on Monday.

While the Malaysian walked away with the biggest purse of $135,000 (approximately Rs 81 lakh) to Mumbai Masters, Saina was the next most expensive player bought at $120,000 (appro Rs 71 lakh) by Hyderabad Hotshots for the August 14-31 event.

Twice postponed, the IBL auction was largely a smooth affair despite a few last minute changes. The bidding of the six icon players, with a base price of $50,000 was supposed to be a closed one but the franchises in the late night meeting on Sunday decided they wanted their icon players to come out in open auction.

Franchises were also not keen on spending on the two icon players Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa. The two are pure doubles players but in the absence of women’s doubles event in the tournament and only one mixed doubles match, their pricing was considered to be a bit too steep.

“Last night we had a closed bidding but then two players, Jwala and Ashwini, went unsold, so we scrapped it,” said Ashish Chadha, CEO of Sporty Solutionz, the commercial partner of IBL. As a result, the base price of Jwala and Ashwini was slashed to $25,000 with IBL agreeing to pitch in with the remaining amount.

The auction began on expected lines with Saina having her wish fulfilled to be either with Hyderabad or Lucknow team.“We were clear that we wanted to have Saina, so we are very happy. We are satisfied with our team composition,” said Rajeev Kamineni, Executive Director of PVP Group that owns Hot Shot.

There was an intense competition among the franchises to get Chong Wei before he went to the Mumbai outfit. “Sunny (Sunil Gavaskar) told us to get the No. 1 player and we did that,” said filmstar A Nagarjuna, co-owner of Mumbai Masters.

The rest of the icon players were bought by the remaining four franchises -- Parupalli Kashyap (Banga Beats, $75,000), PV Sindhu (Lucknow Warriors, $80,000), Jwala (Delhi Smashers, $31,000) and Ashwini (Pune Pistons $25,000).

Ashwini, though, got a raw deal with lesser known doubles counterparts fetching higher sums.The starkest example was of Ashwini’s doubles partner Pradnya Gadre (base price $ 10,000) who was bought for a whopping $46,000 by Hyderabad Hotshots. The Nashik player is the national champion in women’s doubles and has been doing well at the domestic circuit. PK Maneesha, a young doubles player (base price $4000) was bought off for handsome $26,000 by Pune pistons.

India’s men players Sai Praneeth ($40,000), Guru Sai Dutt ($40,000), K Srikanth ($34,000) were among those to get good deals.

Among the international players, world number four German Juliane Schenk (base price $50,000) was bought for $90,000 by Pune Pistons edging out equally keen Delhi Smashers.

However, promising Thailand players Ratchanok Inthanon and Boonsak Ponsana , top ten players Japan's Kenechi Tago, Indonesia's Tommy Sugiarto and Sony Dwi Kuncoro went unsold as they were not available for only a week and their base prices proved to be too high for the franchises.