England´s Stokes sold for record $2.16m at IPL

BANGALORE: England all-rounder Ben Stokes became the most expensive foreign player in Indian Premier League history when he was bought by the Rising Pune Giants for more than $2 million at auction Monday.

The 25-year-old fetched seven times the amount of England´s limited-overs captain Eoin Morgan, who was sold to the Kings XI Punjab for 300,000 dollars in the opening stages of the IPL cricket auction being held in Bangalore.

Stokes attracted multiple bids from the rival franchises competing in the eight-team Twenty20 tournament before the gavel finally came down after Pune put in a bid of 145 million rupees (around 2.16 million US dollars).

The winning bid shattered the previous record paid for a foreign star, which was set in 2014 when the Delhi Daredevils shelled out 90 million rupees for former England captain Kevin Pietersen.

But it is still short of the 160 million rupees that the Royal Challengers Bangalore paid for the Indian batsman Yuvraj Singh in 2015.

The IPL, which was first held in 2008, begins on April 5 and runs until May 21.