Kolkata Knight Riders

While one of its biggest financial successes, the Knight Riders have been the IPL’s greatest flop on the field, at times resembling more of a circus act than anything else. With talk of multiple captains, a prima donna icon player in Sourav Ganguly and a host of misfiring ‘stars’, it’s no surprise that the Kolkata franchise did not retain any of their capped players for IPL4.

The Knight Riders spared no expense in capturing new skipper Gautam Gambhir for a whopping $2.4 million, the most spent on any one player. Gambhir will have the experienced heads of Jacques Kallis and Brett Lee to call on for assistance as he looks to pull the team out of the doldrums, with fellow internationals Eoin Morgan, Shakib Al Hasan, Ryan ten Doeschate and Brad Haddin all valuable commodities.

Yusuf Pathan, the second most expensive man at the auction and Lakshmipathy Balaji – formerly of Chennai – are the only other Indians with great experience but a host of youngsters led by Iqbal Abdullah and Pradeep Sangwan are sure to impress.