CSK had bought Dhoni for a whopping $1.5 million at the IPL 2008 auction.
With the IPL 2022 mega auction around the corner, Madley featured in India spinner R Ashwin’s Youtube channel for a candid conversation and recalled how Chennai Super Kings (CSK) won the bidding war for the legendary MS Dhoni in the inaugural IPL auction.
Fresh from leading India to the 2007 T20 World Cup triumph, Dhoni was in demand at the 2008 auction. He was the most expensive player bought in the first-ever IPL auction, with CSK fetching him for a whopping $1.5 million.
"I remember the second player coming out of the bag that day was Shane Warne. I thought okay here's Warnie and this will be interesting, his base price was I think around 400000 US dollars. That's what he sold for at his base price to Rajasthan Royals and I thought at that time that was a smart move," Madley told Ashwin, before adding that it was Dhoni who kickstarted the 'first bidding war of many' at the IPL auction.
"For the next 10 years, I watched Rajasthan Royals be the coolest bidders in the room. They never got excited, Manoj Badale was just cool and a pattern started to emerge. Then out of the bag came the man himself, the ultimate all-rounder Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and there we saw the first bidding war of many in the IPL auctions," he further said.
MS Dhoni guided Chennai Super Kings to the final of the IPL in the 2008 edition. He may have failed to lift the IPL trophy in his first attempt, but Dhoni took CSK to another level in the coming years, with title wins in 2010, 2011, 2018 and 2021 in addition to two Champions League T20 titles in 2010 and 2014.