IPL 2026 was won by RCB team, defeating GT in the final in Ahmedabad.
Sunil Gavaskar, legendary Indian cricketer, has trolled franchises for wasting money on ‘overrated’ players, who are bought in IPL auctions based on one-off performances in local T20 leagues.
He believes that the teams that selected these players in the auction and only gave them a few games realized that their scouts had failed to distinguish between a good and "overrated" talent.
Kartik Sharma (Rs. 14.20 crore to Chennai Super Kings), Prashant Veer (Rs. 14.20 crore to CSK), Mangesh Yadav (Rs. 5.20 crore to Royal Challengers Bengaluru), Tejasvi Dahiya (Rs. 3 crores to Kolkata Knight Riders), and Mukul Choudhary (Rs. 2.60 crore to Lucknow Super Giants) were among those who went for big money without much domestic experience.
Prashant played six matches for CSK in IPL 2026, scoring 90 runs and taking 2 wickets. Dahiya got two matches and scored 18 runs, and Choudhary played ten matches for 170 runs. Kartik did nicely, scoring 295 runs in 11 games with two fifties, while Mangesh warmed the bench.
“A lot of the big hitters in the various state and city leagues that have sprouted up were exposed when faced with the international quality of bowling in the IPL. In the state and city leagues, the standard of both batting and bowling is nowhere near as good, and unless the scouts have a discerning eye and don’t get swayed by player agents, the franchises will keep picking players based on these performances and find they have wasted their money," Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar.
He stated that player agents made mistakes by buying young, promising cricketers with no proven performance beyond lopsided state leagues.
“When a franchise picks a player for crores and then doesn’t play him in more than a couple of games, it tells you that their scouts and advisers have sold them a dummy. The IPL very quickly finds a player out as being overrated and overvalued. Yet there will be players who will have one performance in the tournament, and it’s usually in a match of not much consequence for their team, and on the basis of that performance be picked for another year. One could make at least four teams of such one-match performers who will be picked again and again in the IPL," he added.
(Sportstar inputs)