After impressing with his superb raiding skills in the maiden season, Siddharth Sirish Desai grabs the headlines on Monday again by becoming the second most expensive player in the Pro Kabaddi League history.
The 26-year old star raider’s sensational form in the sixth edition of the league paid him well, as he was grabbed by Telugu Titans for a huge amount of rs 1.45 crores in the first day of 2019 players auction, making him the top pick of this year’s tournament.
In his first season, Desai was the standout performer for the Mumbai side, where the Maharashtrian youngster secured 221 points in 21 games.
And after Mumbai decided to let him go in the auction, it was understood that he will be in the priority list of many of the team owners.
And it happened also like the way it was expected.
As soon as his name was announced to go under the hammer, Tamil Thalaivas made a direct bid of `1crore.
Which was way more than his base price of `30 lakhs.
However, despite that massive early bid Tamil side failed to secure his services and lose him to Telugu Titans after an intense battle.
His rs 1.45 crores bid is only second to Monu Goyat’s all-time record of rs 1.51 crores. Monu was picked by Haryana Steelers for the record amount in 2018 auction.
Apart from Desai, Nitin Tomar also gets more than a crore rupee contract. Tamil Thalaivas sealed Nitin’s services for rs 1.20 crores before his former franchise Puneri Paltan played a Mastercard by retaining him via Final Bid Match (FBM).
And it was not just the case of Nitin Tomar where FBM changed the complete scenario in the end but instead more than a dozen players were retained by their former franchises using this method.