Yuvraj Singh draws top dollar - US$2.3m - at IPL 7 auction from Royal Challengers Bangalore

Singh led a group of $1million-plus players that included Kevin Pietersen and Dinesh Karthik to Delhi Daredevils and Mitchell Johnson to Kings XI Punjab in the first round of bidding on Wednesday.

Yuvraj Singh will play for Royal Challengers Bangalore. Pal Pillai / Getty Images.

Royal Challengers Bangalore’s US$2.3m (Dh84.4m) purchase of Yuvraj Singh topped bidding at the morning session as Indian Premier League 7 auctions got underway in Bangalore on Wednesday.

The session, which featured the top IPL players for the 2014 season, also saw $1 million-plus payouts to Australia’s Mitchell Johnson ($1.083m, Kings XI Punjab), England’s Kevin Pietersen ($1.5m, Delhi Daredevils) and India’s Dinesh Karthik ($2.083m, Delhi).

RCB were the big spenders in the session, very nearly reaching the spending cap of 6,000 Indian lakhs ($9.654m). They bought Mitchell Starc ($833,000), Albie Morkel ($400,000), Ashok Dinda ($250,000), Parthiv Patel ($233,000), Muttiah Muralitharan ($166,000) and Ravi Rampaul ($150,000) in addition to Yuvraj. They’ve also retained AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle.

Most teams after the morning session had allocated between 4,000-5,000 lakhs of their budget, with only Chennai Super Kings joining RCB in exceeding 5,000. Most of that for CSK was in the form of money already budgeted to their five retained players – Ravichandran Ashwin, Suresh Raina, Dwayne Bravo, Ravindra Jadeja and MS Dhoni. They did, however, add three significant purchases in Faf du Plessis ($791,000), Dwayne Smith ($750,000) and Brendon McCullum ($541,000).

The most miserly were Kings XI, despite their Johnson purchase. They had only retained David Miller and Manan Vohra and kept their spending to between $200,000-550,000 on the six players they added with Johnson. That included George Bailey ($541,000) and Virender Sehwag ($533,000).

Top purchases also included Jacques Kallis ($916,000) to Kolkata Knight Riders, David Warner ($916,000) to Sunrisers Hyderabad, Robin Uthappa ($833,000) to Kolkata, Murali Vijay ($833,000) to Delhi and Mike Hussey ($833,000) to Mumbai Indians.

Champions Mumbai tied up most of their budget in retained players Lasith Malinga, Rohit Sharma, Kieron Pollard, Harbhajan Singh and Ambati Rayudu. They bought Pragyan Ojha ($541,000) and Zaheer Khan ($433,000) with Hussey.

Rajasthan Royals retained most of their big names, keeping Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, James Faulkner, Sanju Samson and Ajinkya Rahane. They bought only Steven Smith ($666,000) and Brad Hodge ($400,000).

On the opposite end were Delhi, who refashioned their side entirely. They retained no players, and with Pietersen and Karthik added Vijay, Mohammed Shami ($708,000), Quinton de Kock ($583,000), Manoj Tiwary, JP Duminy and Rahul Sharma.

Some of the other international purchases included Shakib Al Hasan and Morne Morkel to Kolkata (who retained only Sunil Narine), Shaun Marsh and Thisara Perera to Kings XI and Aaron Finch and Darren Sammy to Sunrisers (who retained Dale Steyn).

Some of the surprise names to go unsold included Mahela Jayawardene, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Azhar Mahmood, David Hussey and Ross Taylor.

The day’s second session will see bidding on Martin Guptill, Cameron White, Tamim Iqbal, Corey Anderson and Johnson Charles, among others.