Shahrukh Khan will be back at Punjab Kings following a fierce bidding war between KKR, CSK and his old franchise that saw the all-rounder bought for Rs 9 crore.
His base price was Rs 40 lakh and Chennai Super Kings made the first bid.
After a long silence, KKR joined with a bid of their own and it escalated quickly from there and raced to 2 crore, before a brief break.
At 2.60 crore, Punjab Kings entered the bidding and it was a quick battle with CSK after that as the bid raced to Rs 4 crore and it continued between the two teams till it reached Rs 5.75 crore. Punjab raised it to 6 but Chennai's rebuttal was quick and it continued on till Chennai finally bowed out - Punjab making the winning bid at Rs 9 crore.
The 26-year-old all-rounder from Tamil Nadu had listed his base price at Rs 40 lakh despite earning Rs 5.25 crore in the previous season of the IPL at Punjab Kings.
In both the 2020 and 2021 Syed Mushtaq Trophy finals, Shahrukh hit the winnings runs. In 2020 he scored an unbeaten 40 off 19 deliveries to help defeat Himachal Pradesh in the final and in 2021, his unbeaten 33 off 15 balls, including a last ball six, helped Tamil Nadu beat Karnataka by four wickets.
The 26-year-old has flourished in the role of a lower middle-order power hitter in the last two years with Tamil Nadu and played a couple of good knocks for Punjab Kings in the IPL as well. In IPL 2021, he amassed 153 runs at a strike-rate of 134.21 batting in the lower middle-order. He did the same job for Tamil Nadu in SMAT 2021 as well, amassing a total of 101 runs at an average of 33.66 and strike-rate of 157.81.
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