Meanwhile, an interesting announcement from Andrew Symonds: He is likely to pull out of the Pakistan tour, which explains why he has attracted a far higher bid than Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden. Ponting went for US$400,000 and Hayden for US$375,000. Though Symonds' stand was made public after he had been signed on by Hyderabad, one wonders whether the franchises didn’t already know of it. That will explain to a large extent why the bidding for Symonds went as high as US$1.35m.

That said, Ponting and Hayden are not bad investments at all. Because if the Pakistan tour is cancelled, Kolkata and Chennai will have hit the jackpot. And if they are not available, or available for less than four matches, they will receive only 25% of their salary.