PKL Season 5 Auction Review

Apologies for the slight delay in writing this post, I had my final exams at University and then I went on holiday!

If you haven’t already, check out my auction preview PKL Season 5 Auction Preview before reading this one and if you want to know more about the ProKabaddi league check out ProKabaddi Season 5 Announced.

Pre-Auction

Since the 8 were given the option to retain one player, of which Jaipur Pink Panthers decided not to retain anyone, it would only be fair if each of the 4 new teams were allowed to pick a player, this was called a priority pick.

Team Gujarat decided to pick defender Fazel Atrachali, Harayana Steelers went for defender Surender Nada, Team Tamil Nadu picked raider Ajay Thakur and Team Uttar Pradesh decided not to pick any player.

Now it might seem strange as to why Jaipur and Uttar Pradesh never retained/priority picked a player, well one of the reasons is because of so called dynamic pricing. How this works is the player that they retain/pick has a value that they are given based on how good the player is perceived to be. And if in the auction they buy a player who is worth more than the player retained/picked then that player’s value would rise by 10%, thus meaning less money can be spent at the auction.

Since Jaipur and Team Uttar Pradesh never retained/picked a player means they won’t have to deal with the dynamic pricing issue. We will see this strategy come to fore later when Jaipur and Team Uttar Pradesh spent big!

Headlines

The most expensive player that was picked was Nitin Tomar who was brought by Team Uttar Pradesh at 93 Lakh Rupees (about £110,000), Nitin Tomar is a services player and  played for India in the Kabaddi World Cup, he is a top class raider, however at this price one could argue he was brought for much more than he is worth, only time will tell.

Rohit Kumar and Manjeet Chhillar were the next most priciest at 81 (~ £97,000) and 75.5 Lakhs (~ £90,000) respectively. Rohit Kumar was the top raider in Season 3 and Manjeet Chhillar is regarded as one of the best players in the game so no surprises here. They were brought by Bengaluru Bulls and Jaipur Pink Panthers respectively.

The most expensive defender was Surjeet Singh who went to Bengal Warriors for 73 Lakhs. Of the foreign players the priciest was Iranian Abozar Mohajermighani who was brought by Team Gujarat for 50 Lakhs (~ £60,000).

The Iranians and the Koreans dominated the overseas players quota with 9 players picked from both Korea and Iran. 3 players from Bangladesh were picked as well 1 from each of Japan, Oman, Nepal, Thailand and Kenya.

Unfortunately no England or Poland players were selected at Auction. However Kenyan captain David Mosambayi was selected, as the only non Asian player, after only a short playing career!

Full squads of all PKL 5 teams

The full squads are given below, those overseas players have a plane (✈️) next to them and thankfully the new team names have been announced. Team Gujarat are called Gujarat FortuneGiants, Team Harayana are called Harayana Steelers, Team Tamil Nadu are called Tamil Thalaivas and Team Uttar Pradesh are called UP Yoddha.

Bengal Warriors

• Raiders: Deepak Narwal, Maninder Singh, Vinod Kumar, Virender Wazir Singh, Anil Kumar, Kuldeep.
• Defenders: Sandeep Malik, Amaresh Mondal, Rahul Kumar, Shashank Wankhede, Surjeet Singh, Young Chang Ko (✈️).
• All Rounders: Ran Singh, Ravindra Ramesh Kumavat, Shrikant Tewthia, Vikash, Bhupender Singh.
• Retained player: Jang Kun Lee (✈️).

Bengaluru Bulls

• Raiders: Ajay Kumar, Gurvinder Singh, Harish Naik, Rohit, Rohit Kumar, Sinotharan Kanesharajah (✈️), Sumit Singh, Sunil Jaipal.
• Defenders: Kuldeep Singh, Mahender Singh, Pardeep Kandola, Ravinder Pahal, Sachin Kumar, Amit Sheoran.
• All Rounders: Preetam Chillar, Ankit Sangwan, Sanjay Shrestha (✈️).
• Retained player: Ashish Kumar.

Dabang Delhi

• Raiders: Abolfazl Maghsoudlou Mahalli (✈️), Anand Patil, R. Sriram, Ravi Dalal, Rohit Baliyan, Shubham Ashok Palkar, Suresu Kumar, Vipin Malik.
• Defender: Bajirao Hodage, Nilesh Shinde, Satpal, Swapnil Shinde, Tushar Bhoir, Sunil Kumar, Viraj Vishnu Landge.
• All Rounders: Chetan S, Rupesh Tomar, Tapas Pal, Vishal, Yatharth.
• Retained player: Meyraj Sheykh (✈️).

Jaipur Pink Panthers

• Raiders: Ajit Singh, Jasvir Singh, Kamal Kishor, Pawan Kumar, Rahul choudhary,  Selvamani K, Sunil Siddhgavali, Tushar Patil.
• Defenders: Jae Min Lee (✈️), Manoj Dhull, Navneet Gautam, Somvir Shekhar, Vignesh B, Nitin Rawal, Ravinder Kumar.
• All Rounders: Dong Gyu Kim (✈️), Manjeet Chhillar, Santhapanaselvam, Siddharth, Abhishek N.

Patna Pirates

• Raiders: Md. Zakir Hossain (✈️), Monu Goyat, Vijay, Vikas Jaglan, Vinod Kumar, Vishnu Uthaman.
• Defenders: Jaideep, Manish Kumar, Sachin Shingade, Sandeep, Satish Kumar, Virender Singh, Vishal Mane.
• All Rounders: Arvind Kumar, Jawahar Dagar, Mohammad Maghsoudlou (✈️), Parveen Birwal.
• Retained player: Pardeep Narwal.

Puneri Paltan

• Raiders: Akshay Jadhav, Monu, More GB, Rajesh Mondal, Rohit Kumar Choudary, Suresh Kumar, Umesh Mhatre.
• Defenders: Dharmaraj Cheralathan, Girish Maruti Ernak, Ravi Kumar, Rinku Narwal, Vikash Khatri, Md. Ziaur Rahman (✈️).
• All Rounders:  Ajay, Narender Hooda, Sandeep Narwal, Takamitsu Kono (✈️).
• Retained player: Deepak Niwas Hooda.

Telugu Titans

• Raiders: Ankit Malik, Athul M S, Mohsen Maghsoudloujafari (✈️), Munish, Nilesh Salunke, Vikas, Vikas Kumar, Vikrant, Vinoth Kumar.
• Defenders: Amit Singh Chhillar, Farhad Rahimi Milaghardan (✈️), Rohit Rana, Sombir, Vinod Kumar.
• All Rounders: Elangeshwaran R, Rakesh Kumar, Vishal Bharadwaj.
• Retained player: Rahul Chaudhari.

U Mumba

• Raiders: Darshan Kadian, Kashiling Adake, Mohan Raman G, Nitin Madane, Shabeer Bappu, Shrikant Jadhav.
• Defenders: D. Suresh Kumar, Deepak Yadav, Joginder Narwal, N. Renjith, Surinder Singh.
• All Rounders: Dong Ju Hong (✈️), E Subash, Hadi Oshtorak, Kuldeep Singh, Shiv Om, Yong Joo Ok (✈️).
• Retained player: Anup Kumar.

Gujarat FortuneGiants

• Raiders: Amit Rathi, Chandran Ranjit, Mahendra Rajput, Pawan Sehrawat, Rakesh Narwal, Sachin, Sukesh Hegde, Sultan Dange, Abozar Mohajer Mighani (✈️).
• Defenders: Amit, C Kalai Arasan, Manoj Kumar, Parvesh Bhainswal, Sunil Kumar, Vikas Kale.
• All Rounders: Mahipal Narwal, Rohit Gulia, Seong Ryeol Kim (✈️).
• Priority Pick: Fazel Atrachali (✈️).

Haryana Steelers

• Raiders: Ashish Chhokar, Deepak Kumar Dahiya, Khomsan Thongkham (✈️), Mohd. Bilal, Prashant Kumar Rai, Surjeet Singh, Vikash Khandola, Wazir Singh.
• Defenders: Babu M, Jeeva Gopal, Mahendra Singh Dhaka, Mohit Chhillar, Neeraj Kumar, Raju Lal Choudhary, Rakesh Singh Kumar, Vikas.
• All Rounders: David Shilisia J Mosambayi (✈️), Deepak Kumar, Kuldeep Singh, Mayur Shivtarkar, Parmod Narwal.
• Priority Pick: Surender Nada

Tamil Thalaivas

• Raiders: Bhavani Rajput, Dong Geon Lee (✈️), K. Prapanjan, M. Thivakaran, Sarang Arun Deshmukh, Sombir, Vineet Kumar, Waleed Al Hasani (✈️).
• Defenders: Amit Hooda, Anil Kumar, Anil Kumar, C. Arun, Darshan J, Mugilan, Muruthu M, Rajesh Manokaran, Sanket Chavan, T. Prabhakaran, Vijay Kumar, Vijin Thangadurai.
• All Rounders: Ananth Kumar, Chan Sik Park (✈️), D. Prathap, Sujit Maharana.
• Priority Pick: Ajay Thakur

UP Yoddha

• Raiders: Ajvender Singh, Gulveer Singh, Mahesh Goud, Nitin Tomar, Rishank Devadiga, Sulieman Kabir (✈️), Surender Singh.
• Defenders: Gurvinder Singh, Hadi Tajik (✈️), Jeeva Kumar, Nitesh Kumar, Rohit Kumar, Sanoj Kumar, Santosh B.S.
• All Rounders: Pankaj, Rajesh Narwal, Sagar Krishna, Sunil.

The preview for VIVO PKL Season 5 will be next…