The Real Mispricing at the Jeddah Auction Wasn't the ₹27 Crore Bid

After the hammer fell in Jeddah, the whole cricket world was chanting one number — 27 crore. Rishabh Pant. Lucknow Super Giants. No single cricketer had ever fetched that much at an IPL auction. The headline was fair. But as I closed my laptop, my mind was stuck on a completely different number: 1.1 crore. Rajasthan Royals. Age 13.

I didn't buy it at the time. I mean, I didn't buy the big headline. The frenzy over Pant's 27 crore is an easy story — if you have the money, buy the biggest name, then write about it for two days. The real story of an auction never makes it onto that board. It lives in the prices nobody notices.

Eight years ago, when I wrote about Mohamed Salah, I set myself a rule — no hot take ships without a comparative stat table. When Liverpool paid £36.9m for a winger Chelsea had thrown away, everyone laughed. I stacked Roma's 15 goals and 11 assists against Sadio Mané's output and wrote that the man would deliver 40-plus goal contributions. He delivered 44. I brought that lesson into cricket too: price and value are never the same thing.

An auction is a market, and a market always reads the front page of the newspaper. What happened in Jeddah was no cricket revolution — it was a pricing error, and a painfully familiar one.

On 24-25 November 2026, the IPL mega auction sat in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Record money moved. Pant went for 27 crore, Shreyas Iyer for 26.75 crore to Punjab Kings, Venkatesh Iyer for 23.75 crore to Kolkata Knight Riders. All three sit on the list of the highest prices in IPL history. Beside them stands 1.1 crore — a teenage opener from Bihar, left-handed, whose name has barely been heard beyond the Under-19 and domestic circuit.

That is where my objection begins. The gap between these two tiers is roughly twenty-four times. The question is not whether Pant or Shreyas are expensive — it is which commodity the market thinks is scarce and which it thinks is plentiful.

The frenzy is easy to understand. The IPL auction has long been a highlight-driven market. Who scored how many last season, whose name sits beside an India shirt, who has how many Instagram followers — most franchises set prices with those three filters. Pant is India's wicketkeeper-batter, left-handed, has captaincy experience, has a brand, is 27. Shreyas captained Kolkata to the title last season, 52 off 52 in the final. Venkatesh has been Kolkata's spine for a few seasons. All of it is true. The problem is that beyond this, the market holds almost no information. And where a market lacks information, it does two things — it either inflates the famous name, or it discards the unfamiliar thing entirely.

Now to the core question. In the IPL market, the scarcest asset is not a batter but a bowler — and a specific type of bowler. Top-order batters are the most abundant commodity in the market. Every side needs three or four of them, and the auction lists fifteen to twenty capable top-order batters. Supply is high, so prices should theoretically be low. The opposite happens, because the higher the supply, the fiercer the competition — and the bigger the name, the bigger the highlight.

Now consider left-arm wrist spin. Someone who can bowl in the powerplay, turn it against left-handers, and tie a batter down outside off in the middle overs — such bowlers are countable on fingers. Yet at auction their price is often a quarter of a top-order batter's. Why? Because turn, line and control do not earn views in a highlight reel. A six earns reel views; a dot ball does not. And the market pays for what it can see.

Think about the death-overs yorker specialist. A T20 match is decided in the last four overs. But how many can do it consistently — the Bumrahs, the Archers, the Natarajan-types? Five or seven, countable. Yet at auction a middle-overs spinner or a dependable opener often costs more.

This is where 1.1 crore becomes relevant. The teenage opener was not cheap — his price was the price of an unpriced call option. When a franchise pays 1.1 crore for a 13-year-old left-handed opener, it is not buying his entire ceiling — it is buying a cheap ticket. If he blossoms, the return is absurd; if he doesn't, the loss is negligible. The strange thing about markets is that on this kind of positively asymmetric opportunity, they often pay the least — precisely when they should not.

What I have learned from years of watching the game, in the ground and on screen, is that the IPL auction is essentially a market of recency. Whoever scored yesterday is expensive today. Whoever will score in two months is cheap today. You do not win this pricing game. You win when you see the future picture before everyone else — and can put a number behind it.

Now let me dig into my own argument. Suppose I am wrong. Suppose 27 crore for Pant is not irrational — because the market is not pricing a top-order batter, it is pricing a left-handed wicketkeeper-batter who bats in the top three, can lead, and can be the face of an entire franchise. How many satisfy all four conditions at once? A handful. Then Pant is genuinely scarce, and the price is fair.

And suppose the 1.1 crore teenager never blossoms — because putting the weight of the IPL on a 13-year-old's shoulders means burning him out. Then my cheap-ticket theory was not wrong, but the ticket expired.

I admit I have no track record of getting every bargain call right. But what I do know is this — the market's errors repeat year after year, and they are exposed only when you look at roles, not highlights.

So what are my testable predictions? Two. First, before the 2027 IPL auction, at least one of these three 20-crore-plus Jeddah buys will be traded or released — because brand and output do not always travel together. Second, the 13-year-old will have played at least fifteen IPL innings by 2027 — whether he succeeds is a completely separate question.

I am writing both predictions down, so that years later I can return and look myself in the face. The empty throne was a question, not a vacancy — and on the auction's ledger, the answer to that question has not yet been written.