Australia fast bowler Jhye Richardson on Thursday (February 18) hit the jackpot as he became the second most expensive bowler in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL) when he was bought for a whopping sum of Rs 14 crore by Punjab Kings in the IPL 2021 auctions in Chennai.
Richardson’s Australian teammate Pat Cummins was the most expensive buy in the history of the IPL auctions when he was picked by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for Rs 15.5 crore in the 2020 IPL auction.
The young talented fast bowler entered the IPL 2021 auction with a base price of Rs 1.5 crore, but eventually picked for almost 10 times the amount, thanks to his latest remarkable performance for Perth Scorchers in the recent Big Bash League (BBL) 2020-21.
He finished BBL 10 as the highest wicket-taker with 29 wickets in 17 matches at a bowling average of 16.31 and strike rate of 12.7 and at an economy rate of just 7.69 in the T20 tournament. The bowler has so far represented Australia in two Tests, 13 ODIs and 9 T20Is.
Read Also: IPL 2021: VIVO return as IPL title sponsors for next three years
When the IPL auction 2021 was going on in Chennai on Thursday, Richardson was quarantining at the team hotel in Christchurch alongside the Australian squad before the upcoming five-match T20I series against New Zealand and he initially feared not getting picked up at all in the auction.
Richardson further revealed that he was nauseous when his name came up at the auction while saying the moment when he was bought for such whopping amount by Punjab Kings was “still sinking in”.
In a video shared by Cricket Australia on Twitter, Richardson said: “My name came up and I got this wave of (nausea) just not knowing what to expect. For the first, what to me felt like about 20 minutes, no one put their paddle up and it's one of those things where you're just like, 'Oh no'.”
Read Also: IPL 2021: Full squads of all the eight franchises after IPL auction
He added, “You have no idea what's going to happen. Then the first paddle went up, which was probably (only) like 10 seconds or five seconds (later), but it felt like a lifetime.”
Meanwhile, the young Aussie further revealed that there were so many emotions in him while watching the IPL auction, saying he was feeling sick and excited at the same moment.
Richardson further added, “I feel like I played a game yesterday. I mentally exhausted myself of feeling all these emotions, of feeling sick and excited.”
He signed off by saying, “The emotions just take over and you forget you double-check (the price he was bought for), you triple check it, you quadruple check it. It took a moment and it's still sinking in at the moment. I almost blanked.
I was watching it, but I felt like I wasn't actually watching it. After everything happened you're obviously really, really excited but then you just hit this massive wall.”
