Shahrukh, Preity pay to go beyond boundaries

The hotshots of Bollywood are now part of the who's who of cricket as well. While Shahrukh Khan had got the ownership of Kolkata franchise, Preity Zinta got Mohali franchise, few weeks back to form their cricket teams. The bidding for the players opened a couple of days ago. Among the bidders were other biggies like Vijay Mallya, Mukesh Ambani and the likes, who own other IPL franchises. However, the investment of B-town stars in the Indian Premier League (IPL) has surely added on to the glamour quotient.

After Preity's 'bhangra' performance and SRK making 'cool' uniforms for his team, came the 'D' day of the actual bidding for players. On February 20, Wednesday, the bidding began and stopped at nothing less than millions. Shahrukh got Sourav Ganguly, Shoaib Akhtar, Ricky Ponting, Brendon McCullum, Chris Gayle, Ajit Agarkar, David Hussey, Ishant Sharma, Murali Karthik, Umar Gul, and Tatenda Taibu in his Kolkatta team. On the other hand, Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Brett Lee, Kumar Sangakkara, Sree Santh, Mahela Jayawardene, Piyush Chawla, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Simon Katich, and Ramesh Powar formed the players of Preity's team, Mohali.

However, what took the cake was the whooping amount of money that was paid to the players. Among all the cricketers, M S Dhoni walked with the maximum amount of 6 Crores, which is almost 17 times more of what he makes playing for India. The other four players who took the creme of the cake were Symonds, Jayasuria, Ishant, and Irfan.

But will this maths and long term planning work for their respective teams is what time will tell us...until then IPL Twenty20 is the next most awaited thing of the year.