The dynamics in an IPL auction are often quite hard to understand, and we are often surprised by some of the decisions that are taken by franchises. Even this year, it was the same and there were several surprises including the likes of Kyle Jamieson and Glenn Maxwell receiving high bids while it wasn’t the same for the likes of Shakib Al Hasan and Dawid Malan.

Quite often there are some players who don’t receive any bids despite performing well in other leagues and for their countries, and on the contrary, there are some who are a tad fortunate to bag an IPL contract, despite poor performance in previous seasons, poor recent form in general or any other reasons.

More than Rs. 145 crores were spent on 57 players, but not all of them necessarily merited those bids.

On that note, here’s a look at 5 players who were lucky to receive bids in the IPL 2021 auction:

1. Arjun Tendulkar

Being the son of the greatest cricketer of all time, Arjun Tendulkar has a lot of expectations on his shoulders. Like his father, even Arjun wanted to be a cricketer from his childhood days and worked towards that as well.

The Mumbaikar is a left-arm pacer who can also score a few runs with the bat and is thus a bowling all-rounder. He doesn’t have much experience in domestic cricket having made his debut only during the recently concluded Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. He played just two games and picked up two wickets while conceding at 9.57.

He didn’t look particularly impressive in those two games and with other good quality domestic pacers, it wasn’t going to be easy for him. However, he still attracted a bid at the very end for his base price of Rs. 20 lakhs. Without taking away any credit from him, it did look like the Mumbai Indians bid for him because of his surname given the fact that Sachin has played for them in the past.

2. Kedar Jadhav

Kedar Jadhav’s stocks have taken a massive hit in the last couple of years as he has not just lost his place in the Indian team but also seen his IPL value fall significantly. He has lost his place in the ODI team as India’s No.6 and was bought for Rs. 2 crores, a pretty big dip from the Rs. 7.8 crores he used to earn while at CSK.

He has failed to put up any performance of significance in the last couple of seasons and has looked woefully out of touch with the bat. With just 224 runs in 22 games at a strike-rate of less than 100 across two seasons, his fall in value was pretty much inevitable.

However, he still managed to land a contract after SRH picked him at a base price during the accelerated process after going unsold initially. The fact that he hasn’t even been bowling much meant he should have probably gone unsold given his poor returns in recent times. While his form in the Vijay Hazare Trophy has been much better, the auction was held before the tournament and thus, he makes the list.

3. Cheteshwar Pujara

The name Cheteshwar Pujara is synonymous with Test cricket at present, and he has played several match-winning knocks. His feats during the recent series against Australia earned him great praise, and he was virtually seen as a national hero. His fifties were filled with grit and determination to help his country win the game.

Coming back to why he was lucky to get a bid, he has never really proved himself as a T20 player. In his 30 appearances in the Indian Premier League, he has scored just 390 runs at a rather poor strike rate of 99.74. Even in general, his strike rate of 109.35 across 64 T20s doesn’t look impressive, and even for someone who plays the anchor role a strike rate of at least 125 is expected.

CSK bought him for his base price of Rs.50 Lakh and it was greeted with a round of applause by everyone present there. However, it didn’t really seem like a tactical buy from them and rather seemed like a mark of respect towards his contributions down under. If we look at it purely based on Pujara’s ability in T20s, he didn’t quite merit the contract, but it was certainly good to see him get a bid as a cricket fan.

4. Harbhajan Singh

Harbhajan Singh is one of India’s greatest bowlers having picked up more than 700 wickets for the country. Even in the IPL, he has picked up 150 wickets in 160 games and has won 4 titles with Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings.

He picked up 16 wickets in the 2019 edition and signaled a return to form after failing to pick up more than 10 wickets in each of the 3 seasons prior to that. However, he hasn’t played any form of competitive cricket since then, and thus, it’s not known what to expect from him.

He went unsold in the first round but was picked up during the accelerated process for his base price of Rs. 2 crores. Spending such an amount on someone who hasn’t played any form of competitive cricket for 22 months wasn’t needed as they already had Varun Chakravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Sunil Narine, and Shakib Al Hasan in their ranks. Thus, Singh can consider himself a bit lucky to have been picked up despite having no match practice for nearly two years.

5. Tom Curran

The English all-rounder has proved himself as a pretty good bowler in quite a few T20 leagues but is yet to make a mark in the IPL. He has picked up just 9 wickets in 10 games while leaking runs at 11.5, which is unacceptable in this format.

He tends to give away a few too many runs as is evidenced by his economy rates in both T20s and T20Is. He concedes at 8.84 in T20s and at 9.22 in the latter. He was bought by the Delhi Capitals for a whopping Rs. 5.25 crores and as a result, he became the 10th most expensive player on the 18th of February.

Curran has most likely been bought to double up as a backup pacer as well as a backup for Marcus Stoinis. However, there were better options than him including the likes of Jason Behrendorff and David Willey while Chris Woakes could have also functioned as Stoinis’ backup. All in all, Curran was quite fortunate to land a bid and even more fortunate to attract such a huge amount.