Mumbai gets Jayasuriya, Harbhajan

Mumbai, Feb 20 (UNI) Sri Lankan blaster Sanath Jayasuriya fetched up the highest bid in the second round of the pathbreaking players auction for the million dollar high profile Indian Premier League, with Mukesh Ambani's Mumbai picking him up for a bid of 975,000 dollars. Jayasuriya's base price was 250,000 dollars.

Mumbai also snapped up India off spinner Harbhajan Singh, whose base price was 250,000 dollars, for 850,000 dollars, while Sri Lankan wicket-keeper batsman Kumara Sangakkara went for 700,000 dollars to the Mohali team.

Anil Kumble, the Indian Test skipper, was picked up by his home team Bangalore, which belongs to Vijay Mallaya for 500,000 dollars.

There were no bids for Australian retired pace bowler Glenn McGrath and Pakistani batsman Mohd Yousuf in the second round and they have been sent into the reserve pool, with their auction now to be held in the end, Chairman and Commissioner of IPL Lalit Modi stated here.

IPL has designated five ''Icon Players'' in Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag, who are not up for bidding and will play for their respective cities Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mohali and Delhi. They will get a 15 per cent more than from the costliest player of their team.

Uptil the end of the second round, Delhi is the only team which has not successfully bidded for any player, while Mumbai, Chennai and Mohali have made successful bids for two players each and Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Jaipur have successfully bid for a player each.

Out of the cap limit of five million dollars, Chennai has already spent 2.1 million dollars, while Mumbai has spent 1.825 million dollars. Mohali has spent 1.175 million dollars, with Kolkata shelling out 425,000 dollars for Shoaib Akhtar so far.

Jaipur has spent 450,000 dollars, while Hyderabad has splurged 750,000 dollars for Adam Gilchrist so far.

In the two rounds completed, India one-day captain M S Dhoni has been the top garner so far with the Chennai franchisee snapping him up for a sum of 1.5 million dollars, which turns out to be a whopping sum of approximately Rs 6 crore.

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