A month before the Indian Premier League 2025 auction, Ness Wadia and Preity Zinta-owned Punjab Kings appointed legendary Australian skipper Ricky Pointing as their head coach and gave him all the freedom to build a team from scratch.
Sitting at the IPL Auction 2025, Punjab Kings had the biggest purse of ₹110.50 crore as they retained only Shashank Singh and Prabhsimran Singh.
However, after the auction, PBKS was left with just ₹35 lakh, as they bought 23 players, including eight overseas players.
Looking for a skipper, Pointing opted for domestic Indian talent Shreyas Iyer and purchased for 26.75 crore. He also led PBKS to buy Arshdeep Singh and Yuzvendra Chahal, who joined for 18 crore each.
Not only this, Pointing was also able to turn to some reliable deputies from his home country Australia. He auctioned internationals Marcus Stoinis ( ₹11 crore) and Glenn Maxwell ( ₹4.20 crore) to the team.
The former Australian skipper included an exciting opener in Josh Inglis, an all-rounder with Aaron Hardie and pacer Xavier Bartlett.
Looking at details, PBKS spent ₹19.85 crore of their total purse of ₹110.5 crore on Australian players. He also bought Marco Jansen, Amartullah Omarzai, and Lockie Ferguson as overseas players from other countries.
Following the IPL Auction 2025, Australian media reacts as Ricky Ponting creates 'mini-Australia' in PBKS. One took to X and wrote. “Petition to change the name of Ricky Ponting’s IPL team from Punjab Kings to Australian Kings”.
Meanwhile, PBKS owner Preity Zinta was delighted after her franchise managed to get '90 percent' of the players that they wanted.
“We wanted to start completely new, some hits and misses, but most of them were hits with what we wanted. No auction ever happens where you think these are the names that we want 100 percent. If you can get above 90 percent, that's a great auction. And we got about 90% of what we wanted,” Zinta told the broadcasters after the auction.
Ponting employed Australian players such as Stoinis and Maxwell during his tenure with Delhi Capitals. He also included David Warner, Mitchell Marsh, Daniel Sams, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Steve Smith and Alex Carey.
He also went for pacers Spencer Johnson and Nathan Ellis in the auction.
Capped Players: Shreyas Iyer ( ₹26.75 crore), Yuzvendra Chahal ( ₹18 crore), Arshdeep Singh ( ₹18 crore), Marcus Stoinis ( ₹11 crore), Glenn Maxwell ( ₹4.2 crore), Marco Jansen ( ₹7 crore), Lockie Ferguson ( ₹2 crore), Josh Inglis ( ₹2.6 crore), Azmatullah Omarzai ( ₹2.4 crore), Aaron Hardie ( ₹1.25 crore)
Uncapped players: Nehal Wadhera ( ₹4.2 crore), Harpreet Brar ( ₹1.5 crore), Vishnu Vinod ( ₹95 lakh), Vijaykumar Vyshak ( ₹1.80 crore), Yash Thakur ( ₹1.6 crore), Harnoor Pannu ( ₹30 lakh), Kuldeep Sen ( ₹75 lakh), Priyansh Arya ( ₹3.8 crore), Musheer Khan ( ₹30 lakh), Suryansh Shedge ( ₹30 lakh), Xavier Bartlett ( ₹80 lakh), Pyla Avinash ( ₹30 lakh), Pravin Dube ( ₹30 lakhs)
