IPL 2009 Mini Auction

A joint record

With squads already built, the 2009 auction was a top-up: 49 players went under the hammer and only 17 were sold. Two of them set a new record. Chennai Super Kings bought Andrew Flintoff and Royal Challengers Bangalore bought Kevin Pietersen, each for US$1.55 million, beating Dhoni's price from the year before.

Neither bet paid off in the way the price suggested. International commitments and injury limited Flintoff to three matches and Pietersen to six, a reminder that the first two auctions both priced availability badly. The best value among the expensive buys was JP Duminy, who scored 372 runs for Mumbai.

An overseas sale

Every player sold in 2009 was from overseas. Franchises used the auction to fill gaps in their foreign quota rather than to build, and Indian players moved between squads by other routes. Pakistan's international players, several of them stars of 2008, took no part in the league from 2009 onwards.

The least spent won again

The season itself was moved to South Africa because it clashed with India's general election. Deccan Chargers, last in 2008, spent less than any other franchise at this auction and won the title under Adam Gilchrist. For the second year running, the champion was the side that had spent least in the auction room, which says as much about how little the early auctions decided as it does about Deccan.

See how Deccan's squad was built on the Deccan Chargers page, or compare with the first auction.

Where the money went

The money was concentrated in very few hands. Chennai and Bangalore accounted for almost half of the total by themselves, almost entirely on Flintoff and Pietersen, while four franchises spent less than ₹3 crore each. Most of the players offered drew no bid at all: Brad Haddin, Luke Wright and Ashley Noffke were among the unsold, a sign of how settled the squads already were after one season.

Two things about 2009 recur throughout this archive. Mini auctions are overwhelmingly about overseas players, because franchises fill their foreign slots there and hold on to their Indian core; and the size of a franchise's spend at a mini auction says almost nothing about how its season will go.