Legendary Sunil Gavaskar is not sure if Mitchell Starc will be able to attract a huge bid in the IPL 2025 mega auction as he did in the previous auction. The Australian was bagged by Kolkata Knight Riders for a whopping amount of INR 24.75 crore in IPL 2024 auction, making him the most expensive player in IPL history.

However, Gavaskar noted that Starc was expensive in the league stage, though he delivered for KKR in the qualifier and the final against Sunrisers Hyderabad. 

Starc scalped 17 wickets in 14 matches of IPL 2024 at a high economy rate of 10.61.

Sunil Gavaskar said on Star Sports show Game Plan, “I think Mitchell Starc bowled well in the last two games. In the sense the semi-finals and the finals, but before that he was pretty expensive, conceding lots of runs in the start, conceding lots of runs in the final couple of overs as well. So I’m not too sure that he will go for the kind of record price that we went for in the previous auction.”

Gavaskar said the defending champions will look to retain Mitchell Starc as they will want to keep their winning combination in the upcoming edition.

“KKR (Kolkata Knight Riders) would want him back in the team because you want a winning combination, you want to get back your winning combination as much as possible. So, KKR could go for him but not at 24 crores,” Gavaskar said.

Meanwhile, KKR retained Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana, and Ramandeep Singh ahead of the IPL 2025 mega auction but the franchise decided to release their captain Shreyas Iyer.

The auction will take place at Jeddah on November 24 and 25 as 1574 players (1,165 Indian and 409 overseas) have registered.