Despite splurging a lot of money at the IPL 2025 auction, it may still not be a smooth season for Punjab Kings.
Punjab Kings (PBKS) will be one of the dark horses in the 2025 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The franchise retained just two players Prabhsimran Singh (INR 4 crore) and Shashank Singh (INR 5.5 crore), both of them being uncapped players. So, with a remaining purse of INR 110.50 crore, Punjab Kings had their task cut out at the IPL 2025 mega auction in Saudi Arabia.
Apart from their newly-appointed skipper Shreyas Iyer (INR 26.75 crore), some of Punjab Kings’ notable buys include Arshdeep Singh (INR 18 crore), Yuzvendra Chahal (INR 18 crore), Marcus Stoinis (INR 11 crore), and Glenn Maxwell (INR 4.2 crore) to name a few. They spent a whopping INR 110.15 crore at the IPL auction, but was it all worth it? There might be a few auction choices that could come to haunt PBKS in IPL 2025. We take a look at some of them here:
As stated earlier, Punjab Kings retained just two players before the mega auction which meant that they had four Right-to-Match (RTM) cards to be used. While they did use one of those RTM cards on getting back Arshdeep Singh, England’s Liam Livingstone and South Africa’s Kagiso Rabada could have also been valuable options. Sure, these players may not have flourished in the IPL in recent years, but they do bring their experience to the table, which would have helped PBKS in a big way.
New Zealand’s Lockie Ferguson is surely a talented cricketer but the fact that he is injury-prone might mean that Punjab Kings are at a disadvantage. Punjab Kings acquired the pacer for his base price of INR 2 crore, but a foot injury kept Lockie out of the ongoing Champions Trophy.
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He isn’t a certainty to play the IPL as well. Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman could have been a worthy choice or even Afghanistan’s Naveen-ul-Haq for that matter.
On paper, the Punjab Kings batting line-up looks promising with the likes of Prabhsimran Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Glenn Maxwell, Shreyas Iyer, and Nehal Wadhera to name a few. But it is the team’s bench strength where they lack. They do have Vishnu Vinod and Priyansh Arya. However, their lack of experience in IPL doesn’t help.
While Vishnu has played just six IPL matches between 2017 and 2023, Priyansh is yet to make his IPL debut. Priyansh is however coming on the back of an excellent season in the inaugural Delhi Premier League last year, where he scored 608 runs from 10 matches. However, he remains untested in the cash-rich league.
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