File photo of Rishabh Pant.© AFP
Rishabh Pant became the most expensive player in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL) after being bought by Lucknow Super Giants for a whopping sum of Rs 27 crore during IPL 2025 mega auction. There was a massive bidding war between LSG and Sunrisers Hyderabad for the star but the Sanjiv Goenka-owned franchise eventually stood ahead at Rs 20.75 crore bid. However, that was not the end of challenge for LSG. Delhi Capitals decided to use their Right To Match (RTM) card and the LSG franchise then had to come up with a final bid of Rs 27 crore to secure the services of Pant.
While speaking about the pick, Goenka said that the franchise bought Pant in the budget it kept for the India wicketkeeper-batter. He added that no ego was involved in LSG going so far to win the bidding war.
“No no, not at all. Nothing like that at all. This is not about vanity at all. Ego nahi hai [There’s no ego here]. I did not have that in mind at all. We had structured the auction in a certain way and Pant was an integral part of our plans. We had done some budgeting for him,” Goenka told Cricbuzz.
“Look we could not get Bhuvneshwar Kumar and we went for Akash Deep. We wanted two Indian fast bowlers and we spent INR 9.75 crore on Avesh (Khan) and INR 8 crore on Akash Deep. This was not about one individual player. It was not about egos. Did we want to have the most expensive player? No. At the end of the day this does not mean very much to the franchise. Eventually it is about performance and how the team balance looks,” he added.
LSG purchased 19 players in the auction after retaining five including Nicholas Pooran, Ravi Bishnoi, Mayank Yadav, Mohsin Khan and Ayush Badoni.
Pant was by far their costliest buy with Avesh Khan (Rs 9.75 crore) and Akash Deep (Rs 8 crore) a distant second and third respectively. The likely opening pairing of Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram is not the strongest in the competition, putting more responsibility on Pant and Pooran.
(With agency inputs)
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