Delhi Capitals' owner Kiran Grandhi grabbed everyone's attention in the Tata IPL Auction by deploying strategies to make the best combination possible for his franchise.
Kiran Kumar Grandhi is a veteran businessman and currently the CEO, MD and director of GMR Infrastructure. Alongside this, he is the chairman and co-owner of Delhi Capitals. GMR group co-owns the IPL Franchise Delhi Capitals in partnership with the JSW group. He was representing the GMR group at the table and was making bidding decisions alongside Parth Jindal from the JSW group.
Delhi Capitals had an amazing auction as they managed to fill all slots available after retaining Rishabh Pant, Prithvi Shah, Axar Patel and Anrich Nortje pre-auction.
Delhi Capitals got the mighty Australian opener David Warner for a justified price of 6.25 Crore on Day-1 but that was not what fans noticed. The DC owner was seen bidding for almost every rising player and inflating prices of players. Delhi Capitals Twitter handle also accepted the fact of bidding for a lot of players.
Alongside David, they also managed to get the T-20 world cup 2021 Man of Match- Mitchell Marsh for 6.5 Crore amongst some big buys.
Fans hailed Kiran Kumar Gandhi's tactics on social media as they thought he was raising the bids of players so franchises like Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings do not get their targeted players for a steal.
It is worth mentioning that coming into the auction Delhi Capitals had the smallest purse (Rs 47.5 Crore) out of all the franchises, but they still managed to pick some great players and have now formed of the best squads.
Shardul Thakur was also bought by Delhi Capitals for Rs 10.75 crore after CSK was unable to get him back as they had already spent Rs 14 crore on Deepak Chahar.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)