#IPLStories: The inside story of the bidding war between MI and CSK for Dhoni!

Chennai Super Kings had roped in MS Dhoni in the inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2008 season, a move that worked extremely well for them as Dhoni went on to help them lift four titles ever since. However, the Jharkhand-born cricketer could've instead gone on to play for Mumbai Indians, if it wasn't for a certain rule put in place at the auction. But how?

It was 2008, the first-ever IPL auction was held in the country. No one would have thought this mega event could change the dynamics of the cricket world. The franchises were all ready and a rule of icon players was implemented for marketing reasons for the inaugural season. As it was understood that local big names playing for home teams will be a boost for the new league. Sachin, Sehwag, Dravid, etc were pre-signed as icon players for their home teams at a fee of "the costliest player they buy in the auction + 15% of it". Sachin's final fee read $1.65m.

 

 

As Ranchi did not have any home team, the star player was included in the auction .ie. Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He was set to be auctioned for like others. Few teams had no outright local icon player as well. One of them was CSK. Mumbai Indians publicly said that they will do everything to land MSD in their team. The message from CSK boss N Srinivasan to officials was: “Get MSD at all costs. Spend whatever it takes." So, the seeds of the iconic rivalry were planted on the very first day. 

Cut to the auction day, MI's $3.5m purses faced CSK's $5m purses. Both went head to head as the IPL auctioneer still recalls it as the first of many bidding wars of the IPL. Ultimately, CSK successfully signed MS Dhoni at a fee of $1.5m, the costliest player at the time. MI lost the bidding war as they already had Sachin signed and with Dhoni's fee, they could have been looking at paying 60% of the total budget allowed on the team ($5m) on two players.

Notably, former Indian cricketer VB Chandrasekhar also played a very important role in landing Dhoni to CSK. In an interview, he said: "I had set USD 1.1 million as the maximum amount to be spent on purchasing Dhoni. But, many teams including MI, RR were fighting for Dhoni. I knew that they will not go after a certain fixed amount, but I was scared that they might increase the price of Dhoni and make sure that we (CSK) don't than enough money to buy other players."

"After a few rounds, I stopped to bet for Dhoni, while other teams kept fighting to bring to their club. At one point, everyone thought that it was all done, when the auctioneer was about to hit the gavel for the third and final time and sell off Dhoni to another team. I raised my hand at the last second and said USD 1.5 million. And that's how Dhoni came into CSK."