Leadership troubles for Punjab ahead of IPL 2018

With the IPL 2018 Auctions done and dusted, franchises have done their part by picking up the best possible players for their team from the pool of 578 players. The daunting auction process which ran for a marathon 2 days finally came to an end on Sunday evening.

New Delhi: With the IPL 2018 Auctions done and dusted, franchises have done their part by picking up the best possible players for their team from the pool of 578 players. The daunting auction process which ran for a marathon 2 days finally came to an end on Sunday evening.

Though all the teams performed really well in the bidding war, undoubtedly the winners were the Kings XI Punjab. The franchise, after a decade of poor performance came out with a fresh mindset. Looking for a complete overhaul, the Punjab based franchise went all guns blazing at the auction table. Retaining only one (left-arm spinner Axar Patel) player, the franchise revamped the entire team. On papers the franchise looks a formidable group with the combination of youth and experience.

The Rajasthan and Kolkata based franchise recently got over with the second task of assigning the captain of their respective teams. The eyes of the cricket pundits will now be on the Preity Zinta’s owned team. Picking a leader in a team that includes the likes of vintage Yuvraj Singh, Ravichandran Ashwin and Jamaican explosive batsman Chris Gayle and former Punjab captain David Milller will be a difficult task for the franchise.

36-year-old, local boy Yuvraj Singh, who has represented the franchise in past seasons, seems to be the front-runner. The stylist south-paw has been a darling among the owners and fans. But will the franchise, which has entirely changed their team composition, opt for Yuvi or will it give recently transferred Ashwin the mantle of captaincy? The tricky question for now remains unanswered.

The complete list of players for Kings XI Punjab is as follows

Axar Patel (Rs 6.5 Crore - Retained)

Ravichandran Ashwin – Rs 7.6 crore

Yuvraj Singh – Rs 2 crore

Chris Gayle  - Rs 2 Crore

KL Rahul – Rs 11 crore

Karun Nair – Rs 5.6 crore

David Miller -Rs 3 crore (Retained via RTM)

Aaron Finch – Rs 6.2 crore

Marcus Stoinis – Rs 6.2 crore (Retained via RTM)

Mayank Agarwal – Rs 1 crore

Ankit Singh Rajpoot – Rs 3 crore

Manoj Tiwary – Rs 1 crore

Mohit Sharma – Rs 2.4 crore (Retained via RTM)

Mujeeb Zadran – Rs 4 crore

Barinder Sran – Rs 2.2 crore

Andrew Tye – Rs 7.2 crore

Akshdeep Nath – Rs 1 crore

Ben Dwarshuis – Rs 1.4 crore

Mayank Dagar – Rs 20 Lakh

Pradeep Sahu – Rs 20 Lakh

Manzoor Dar – Rs 20 Lakh