Well, since MI & CSK were @ the top, they had every reason to retain as much as possible, in contrast to KKR, who had nothing to lose. CSK did what it could to retain as much as possible, losing Murli & Oram, while gaining Dwayne Bravo, while Mumbai did things the right way - retained Sachin, Bhaji, Malinga & Pollard. While retaining that core strength, they also became stronger by adding on Rohit Sharma and Andy Symonds. So they're better off @ the end, despite losing Zak & Saurabh Tiwari.
While teams like KKR and KXIP had no reason to keep any of their side, I'm surprised that DD retained only Sehwag. I think they should have held Sehwag, AB, Nannes and Warner, and try to retain as many of their outgoing players as possible. Instead, they've lost the cream of their overseas players to RCB, some of their good local strength to KKR (Bhatia & Sangwan) and others to other teams, like Collingwood to RR. The new squad has only one notable Indian batsman in Venugopal Rao, and among their overseas players, only Warner and Morne Morkel. The others who played today were just not impressive. Good that they beat PWI, but they'll find themselves totally outclassed by most teams.
For that matter, I'm even surprised that RCB let go of as much as they did. In addition to Kohli, I'd have thought they'd lock Steyn, Kallis and Praveen Kumar, and then do the rest of the auctions as they liked. Even RR, despite doing badly, used the players they could lock properly and kept Warne & Watson, and bought back Tait & Botha.
In short, CSK, MI and RR did the right thing by retaining as many as they could, KKR, KXIP and DC did the right thing by not locking back anyone, while DD & RCB totally lost the plot by overhauling their entire teams. Although RCB got the cream of some of the other teams - DD's overseas stars, KKR's Pujara & Langeveldt, and are probably in the same situation as last year. My prediction - DD will end up near the bottom, despite their win today.
Anupamaa
Pocket Mein Aasman
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