Rishabh Pant bought by Lucknow Super Giants for a whopping Rs 27 crore during IPL 2025 mega auction truly became the most expensive player for the Indian Premier League (IPL). There was a massive bidding war between LSG and Sunrisers Hyderabad for the star but the Sanjiv Goenka-owned franchise eventually stood ahead at Rs 20.75 crore bid. However, that was not the end of challenge for LSG. Delhi Capitals decided to use their Right To Match (RTM) card and the LSG franchise then had to come up with a final bid of Rs 27 crore to secure the services of Pant.
Goenka said about the selection that they have Pant within the budget they spent for the India wicketkeeper-batter. Ego looked, he added, was not counted in LSG going that far to win the war in bidding.
“No, not at all. Such a thing does not arise. This is not about vanity at all. Ego nahi hai [There’s no ego here]. I did not have that in mind at all. We had structured the auction in a certain way and Pant was an integral part of our plans. We had done some budgeting for him,” Goenka told Cricbuzz.
“Look we could not get Bhuvneshwar Kumar and we went for Akash Deep. We wanted two Indian fast bowlers and we spent INR 9.75 crore on Avesh (Khan) and INR 8 crore on Akash Deep. This was not about one individual player. It was not about egos. Did we want to have the most expensive player? No. At the end of the day this does not mean very much to the franchise. Eventually it is about performance and how the team balance looks,” he added
LSG bought 19 players in the auction after retaining five including Nicholas Pooran, Ravi Bishnoi, Mayank Yadav, Mohsin Khan and Ayush Badoni.
The costliest buy for them was Pant, with Avesh Khan (Rs 9.75 crore) and Akash Deep (Rs 8 crore) way behind in ranking. The probable starting pair of Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram is not the toughest in competition-door closing; thus more reliance rests on Pant and Pooran.
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