After an action-packed two days in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Punjab Kings (PBKS) have built a strong squad for the IPL 2025. Punjab Kings spent the biggest chunk of their purse at the mega auction - Rs 26.75 crore to acquire the services of Shreyas Iyer.
Iyer had led Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to the IPL title in the previous edition and was expected to attract big bids. Punjab's newly appointed head coach Ricky Ponting has hinted that the franchise might want Shreyas to lead them in the upcoming 18th edition of the cash-rich league.
"I wanted to work with Shreyas," Ponting told Star Sports after buying Shreyas at the mega auction. "I've worked with him before and he is a great guy and a great player. He'll be a great leader for our team if we decide to go that way, which I'm pretty sure we probably will. And obviously, he was the championship-winning captain last year. So there are lots of great things about bringing him to Punjab."
Punjab also splurged Rs 18 crore in roping Yuzvendra Chahal into their squad and Ponting feels that a quality spinner like him can be a valuable addition to the franchise. "Yuzi (Yuzvendra Chahal) is the highest-quality Indian spinner in the auction, so, we wanted to fill certain gaps with the best players we possibly could. And yes, we spent a bit of money to get there, but what we're trying to do is rebuild this franchise basically from the ground up and you can't do that without the best players," Ponting told JioCinema.
"So, we felt so far that the auction's gone exactly the way we wanted. We've got a bit of work to do in the back half this afternoon, but that's the fun of it."
Punjab Kings full squad for IPL 2025:
Neha Wadhera (4.20 crore), Shreyas Iyer (26.75 crore), Prabhsimran Singh (wk, 4 crore), Vishnu Vinod (wk, 90 lakhs), Josh Inglis (wk, 2.60 crore), Shashank Singh (5.50 crore), Harpreet Brar (1.50 crore), Marco Jansen (7 crore), Azmatullah Omarzai (2.40 crore), Glenn Maxwell (4.20 crore), Marcus Stoinis (11 crore), Yash Thakur (1.60 crore), Vijaykumar Vyshak (1.80 crore), Arshdeep Singh (18 crore), Yuzvendra Chahal (18 crore), Lockie Ferguson (2 crore), Azmatullah Omarzai (1.5 crore), Harnoor Pannu (30 lakh), Kuldeep Sen (80 lakh), Priyansh Arya (3.8 crore), Aaron Harie (1.25 crore), Musheer Khan (30 lakh), Suryansh Shedge (30 lakh), Xavier Bartlett (80 lakh), Pyla Avinash (30 lakh), Pravin Dubey (30 lakh)
