From Cameron Green to Nicholas Pooran, IPL 2026's biggest investments have not paid off
The IPL auction is, on paper, supposed to filter for value. The teams with the deepest pockets buy the players most likely to win them games, the players most likely to win games are paid accordingly, and the spreadsheet balances. IPL 2026 is not balancing. Four of the league's biggest financial commitments are sitting on returns that, if the bidding reset tomorrow, would not bring the same prices: Cameron Green at KKR, Nicholas Pooran retained by LSG, Kartik Sharma at CSK and Venkatesh Iyer at RCB.
The headline name is Cameron Green. The Australian all-rounder went to Kolkata Knight Riders for Rs 25.20 crore on 16 December 2025, the highest fee ever paid for an overseas player in the IPL. Eight matches in, his returns are 196 runs at a strike rate of 153.12 with one fifty, and two wickets with the ball. The lone fifty was a 79 against Gujarat Titans, a knock that hinted at the player KKR thought they were buying. But one swallow does not make a season, and KKR are eighth with the playoffs drifting out of reach.
Pooran's strike rate has fallen by half
If Green's run is below par, Nicholas Pooran's is the steepest fall in the league. LSG retained him for Rs 21 crore last winter on the back of a 524-run season at a strike rate of 196.25 in IPL 2025, with a tournament-leading 40 sixes. In IPL 2026 he has 51 runs in six matches at a strike rate of 79.68, with a top score of 19. His runs cost roughly Rs 41 lakh apiece. LSG sit at the foot of the table on four points, and the easiest reading of their season is that the engine that drove their batting last year has stalled.
Some of the explanation is structural. LSG have shuffled Pooran down the order this season, asking him to anchor in the middle overs instead of taking the bowling apart from balls 30-50. Some of it is technical: he has looked late onto the ball against pace and less commanding against spin than at any point of his LSG career. Whatever the cause, the franchise needs the IPL 2025 Pooran back if they are to win any of their final games.
The Indian buys that have not delivered
Kartik Sharma was Chennai Super Kings' big swing in Abu Dhabi. CSK paid Rs 14.2 crore for the 19-year-old uncapped right-hander from Bharatpur, jointly the most expensive uncapped Indian player ever sold at an IPL auction. Four games into his IPL career he has 43 runs at an average of 10.75, and is now competing with senior pros for a place in the XI.
RCB's Rs 7 crore signing of Venkatesh Iyer at the December auction looked, at the time, like a smart use of a top-order all-rounder coming off a difficult IPL 2025 at KKR. Through the first half of IPL 2026 he has not started a single match, with two appearances as an impact substitute. The most recent of those ended with a dismissal by Arshad Khan for 12 against Gujarat Titans on Thursday. The Rs 7 crore has bought RCB about 16 minutes of cricket.
What it tells us about the auction
None of these stories on their own are damning. Form is cyclical, openers can get out for nought twice in a row, and teenagers do not always step up at first ask. But four expensive misses in a single year matter, especially in a season where Punjab Kings have led the table on a roster of cheaper signings. The December auction now looks, in retrospect, like a moment when the league's wealthiest franchises mistook reputation and potential for current form.
Some of these players still have time to turn it around. Green has a top-order pedigree to lean on, Pooran's bat speed has not gone anywhere, and Kartik Sharma is 19. The IPL 2026 season has roughly two weeks to run before playoff lines harden, and at least two of these names could still hit a knock that drags their auction year back to neutral. For now, though, the league is being shaped by the players the wealthier sides did not pay top dollar for.
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