Naveen Express enters his first PKL auction after six years and 1,102 raid points at Dabang Delhi
For the first time in his Pro Kabaddi career, Naveen Kumar will sit in an auction room. Dabang Delhi K.C. have released the raider alongside Ashu Malik and Yogesh Dahiya ahead of the Season 12 auction in Panchkula on May 31, walking away from the franchise that signed him as a teenager and stayed with him for six years.
The numbers explain why the decision was hard. Naveen Express, as the league has christened him, leaves Dabang Delhi with 1,102 raid points across his six-season run, the first player in PKL history to clear a thousand points for a single franchise before walking into the open market. He hit the 1,000 mark in Season 10 in just 90 matches, faster than any raider before him, against Bengal Warriors in Chennai. The 500-point club had already gone the same way: 47 matches, ahead of Maninder Singh's previous best of 56.
PKL 8 MVP, then captain
Naveen was the most valuable player of the league's eighth season, the run that ended with Dabang Delhi beating Patna Pirates 37-36 in the final and lifting the franchise's first PKL trophy. Joginder Narwal had the armband through that campaign. The captaincy came to Naveen later, when Dabang Delhi made him the face of the team for Season 10 and beyond.
Releasing Naveen, Ashu Malik and Yogesh Dahiya gives the franchise the largest purse in the auction room, 4.56 crore, and the option to rebuild the raiding unit rather than spend half of it retaining the same names. The decision is as much structural as sporting. The Tribune quoted Naveen this week saying he was "very excited" about a process he has only watched from the outside, and his agents will have noted that the revised FBM rule lets a buying franchise retain him for either one season or two without writing him a long-term commitment.
Who builds around him
Eleven other franchises walk into Panchkula with a Naveen-shaped gap in their thinking. Some, like Bengaluru Bulls and U Mumba, are short of a top-end Indian raider and have the purse to enter the bidding the moment his name comes up. Others have a settled raiding core and will let the price climb past them. The first team to use the FBM tag on Naveen, if any does, will be making a statement, not a transaction.
The auction lands on May 31. At twenty-six, Naveen Kumar walks in as the league's most decorated active raider with a six-year monopoly behind him, and whatever number comes back against his name will be the first time PKL has put a price on it.
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