IPL 2025 auction had one of those bidding wars that feels routine in the moment and devastating in retrospect.
IPL auction battle between RCB and Punjab Kings for Priyansh Arya
Priyansh Arya went under the hammer with a base price of 30 lakh and what followed was 34 bids across four franchises before Punjab Kings eventually secured him at 3.8 crore. Delhi Capitals and Mumbai Indians did the early work.
Then RCB entered at 90 lakh and what followed was sixteen consecutive rounds between them and Punjab Kings, a pure two-horse race that went all the way to 3.6 crore from RCB and 3.8 crore from Punjab and then silence from the RCB end. Twenty lakh.
That is the difference between Arya opening with Virat Kohli at the Chinnaswamy on the shortest boundaries in the IPL and Arya opening for Punjab Kings at Mullanpur and scoring 93 off 37 balls with nine sixes against LSG at a strike rate of 251. RCB wanted him badly enough to bid sixteen times.
RCB just didn’t want him badly enough to bid a seventeenth time. Every time Arya clears the rope in a Punjab Kings jersey that seventeenth bid becomes the most expensive decision RCB did not make.
The auction trail tells the story of a franchise that knew exactly who Priyansh Arya was and still let him go
What makes the RCB side of this story so painful is that their bidding behavior was not passive. They were not dragged into this war reluctantly.
From the moment the price hit ₹90 lakh they were the ones pushing it upward with every counter-bid Punjab placed. At 1 crore RCB countered. At 2 crore RCB countered. At 3 crore RCB countered. At 3.6 crore RCB placed what turned out to be their final bid and Punjab immediately came back with 3.8 and that was that.
Logic behind what RCB were doing is obvious, they needed a young Indian explosive opener to partner Kohli, someone who could do the aggressive Powerplay work and free their captain to play the anchor-aggressor role he does so well. Arya was exactly that profile. Left-handed against Kohli’s right-handed setup at the top. Delhi-born and therefore already comfortable at high-pressure grounds.
A player whose domestic numbers screamed top-order T20 threat. RCB saw all of that across sixteen bids and then stopped at 3.6 crore. Punjab saw the same thing across eighteen bids and paid 3.8. The 20 lakh gap is not really about money for a franchise of RCB’s size. It is about a moment of hesitation that Punjab did not share and the difference between those two mindsets is now visible every time PBKS take the field this season unbeaten.
- The Alternate Reality: Virat Kohli + Arya opening at Chinnaswamy
What RCB Lost: Smallest boundaries in IPL, Arya already smashing 9 sixes at a bigger ground, imagine the damage here - The Alternate Reality: Indian opener solves combination
What RCB Lost: Overseas slot flexibility, instead used on Phil Salt - The Alternate Reality: 251 SR in Powerplay
What RCB Lost: Already good starts could’ve turned into absurd, game-breaking dominance - The Alternate Reality: 182-run stand with Connolly (80 balls)
What RCB Lost: 2nd fastest 100+ stand in IPL history, with Kohli, this could’ve been an all-time iconic partnership
Also READ: ‘Destructive’: Priyansh Arya’s 37-ball 93 leaves fans stunned as Punjab Kings pile up runs against Lucknow in Mullanpur
What the Virat Kohli-Priyansh Arya opening partnership would have looked like for RCB
The most tormenting version of this what-if is not abstract, it is entirely concrete because we have seen both halves of the hypothetical partnership in full flow this season.
Kohli has been exceptional for RCB in 2026 with 69 off 38 against SRH and a steady 50 against MI and his role has been the anchor-aggressor who controls the powerplay tempo and builds the platform. Phil Salt beside him has been explosive and effective.
But what Arya would have brought is something qualitatively different, a left-handed batsman striking at 251 in powerplays who forces fielding captains to set two entirely different field shapes simultaneously, who takes the boundary-hitting pressure completely off Kohli and who would have turned the Chinnaswamy’s short square boundaries into a personal highlight reel from ball one of every innings.
Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers partnership that put on 229 runs in 2016 is still the fastest 100-plus partnership in IPL history. Arya and Cooper Connolly just put on 182 off 80 balls against LSG which is now the second fastest. Arya’s name is already appearing in the same statistical neighborhood as the greatest partnership in this competition’s history.
At the Chinnaswamy alongside Kohli that number would likely have been even more outrageous. RCB had sixteen chances to make it happen. They stopped one bid short of the one that mattered.
Comments are closed.