IPL Auction 2018: Snubbed by Rahul Dravid's U-19 team, Rahul Chahar gets Rs 1.9 crore

Cricket can be a great leveller! Uncapped  Rajasthan spinner Rahul Chahar must have been feeling a little low after narrowly missing out on being part of the Under-19 team which is currently playing the World Cup in New Zealand. However, it was a super Sunday for Rahul Chahar, when he got picked for a massive amount of Rs 1.9 crore against base price of Rs 20 lakh. 

In the last IPL, he was part of the Rising Pune Supergiants team. Clearly he was in radar of many IPL franchises. As soon as the auction started, Mumbai and Royals started bidding for him. Royals continued its tradition of targeting RPS players by going for Rahul Chahar. However, Mumbai Indians, after a lukewarm Day 1 of auction, was in no mood to relent. Chahar's value gradually increased Rs 10 lakhs at a time. Finally, with Mumbai offering Rs 1.9 crore, Rajasthan relented and the 18 year old was assured of a massive pay package. He is incidentally brother of Deepak Chahar, who has also been part of IPL. 

Considering Mumbai Indians have just picked Krunal Pandya as a spinner so far, it's possible that Rahul Chahar will get a decent number of games for his franchise. He has been in decent form in the recently concluded Mushtaq Ali trophy, taking 6 wickets in 4 matches. He had a decent outing for Under-19 squad against their English counterparts. He took 10 wickets in 4 outings in English condition and would have considered himself unlucky for missing out on that flight to New Zealand. Today, though Rahul Chahar would be a happy man after getting Rs 1.9 crore in matter of 5 minutes. 

Coming to the auction, with a significantly reduced purse due to high retention prices, MI only bought six players in the whole day on Saturday. That included Krunal Pandya for a whopping Rs 8.8 crore. MI used RTM option to get him. Pollard too was retained using RTM. Other picks are Mustafizur, Suryakumar, Cummins and Ishan Kishan. The first three are proven IPL players and Kishan is an exciting talent, though he came for a hefty cost of Rs 6.2 crore. 

MI team so far:

Krunal Pandya

Ishan Kishan

Kieron Pollard

Pat Cummins