Kings XI Punjab was very much in the news during the two-day IPL auction, that took place in Bangalore a few days back.

The management went for an expensive buy in the face of Indian batsman KL Rahul, for whom they shelled out INR 11 crore. They also went on to buy ace spinner Ravichandran Ashwin for INR 7.6 crore. The Punjab franchise had spent INR 67.4 crore out of the available purse of INR 67.5 crore.

Kings XI break the bank in auction

Having reached the finals just once (2014 IPL), the Punjab franchise will hope to come good, having spent a good amount of money in the bidding market. Interestingly, they also roped in flamboyant West Indies cricketer, Chris Gayle for INR 2 crore.

One of the best T20 batsmen, Gayle went unsold in the first two rounds of the bidding before getting a place in the Punjab squad.

Gayle responds to Virender Sehwag’s Twitter post

Former Indian opener and Punjab’s director and mentor Virender Sehwag posted a picture with his management on Twitter after the auction got over. He wished the boys well and received a thumbs up from none other than Gayle himself.

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Later, he spoke to amarujala.com and revealed the reason behind getting Gayle in the side.

“Simply having him (Gayle) in your side means a lot. Being an opening batsman, Gayle can prove to be a danger to any opposition. Gayle’s brand value speaks for himself and how effective he is in this format. We decided to bring in Gayle as a back-up option for the opening slots.”

Kings XI Punjab:

Axar Patel, KL Rahul, Ravichandran Ashwin, Andrew Tye, Aaron Finch, Marcus Stoinis, Karun Nair, Mujeeb Zadran, Ankit Singh Rajpoot, David Miller, Mohit Sharma, Barinder Singh Sran, Yuvraj Singh, Christopher Gayle, Ben Dwarshuis, Akshdeep Nath, Manoj Tiwary, Mayank Agarwal, Manzoor Dar, Pardeep Sahu, Mayank Dagar.