Punjab Kings on Thursday bought right-arm pacer Jhye Richardson for Rs 14 crore during the Indian Premier League mini auction Chennai. The young Australian started with a base price of Rs 1.5 crore. The franchise also bought England batting sensation Dawid Malan for Rs 1.5 crore. 

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Punjab Kings also purchased Shahrukh Khan, a player hailing from Tamil Nadu for Rs 5.25 crores. Riley Meredith too was bought by the franchise for Rs 8 crore. Australian all-rounder Moises Henriques was bought by the franchise for Rs 4.2 crore. 

Ahead of the auction, the franchise as renamed to Punjab Kings  from the previous name, Kings XI Punjab. Just like the other teams, Punjab had announced a list of players who were either released or retained by the franchise. 

Punjab released big hitter Glenn Maxwell, West Indies pacer Sheldon Cottrell as well as  Jimmy Neesham, K Gowtham, Mujeeb ur Rahman, Hardus Viljoen and Karun Nair. 

Having released so many players, Punjab had the most amount of Rs 53.2 crore to spend in the auction. 

While skipper KL Rahul as well as Mayank Agarwal were retained, the franchise decided to retain Chris Gayle, Nicholas Pooran and Chris Jordan when it came to overseas players.

In the bowling unit, star Indian pacer Mohammed Shami was retained along with spinners Ravi Bishnoi and Murugan Ashwin. A total of 13 Indian players were retained by the franchise. 

Punjab Kings squad for IPL 2021: KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Chris Gayle, Nicholas Pooran, Mohammed Shami, Chris Jordan, Riley Meredith, Jhye Richardson, Fabian Allen, Dawid Malan, Moises Henriques, Mandeep Singh, Prabhsimran Singh, Deepak Hooda, Sarfaraz Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Murugan Ashwin, Harpreet Singh, Arshdeep Singh, Ravi Bishnoi, Ishan Porel, Darshan Nalkande, Utkarsh Sinngh, Jalaj Saxena, Saurabh Kumar.