"Sunrisers Hyderabad actually won the auction and forced Delhi to use a "right to match" mechanism to keep KP. If he is really that destructive, divisive and downright awkward then why were two teams ready to pay nearly a million pounds for the pleasure of him wrecking their dressing room too?"
Kevin Pietersen's new life as a global bat for hire has earned him a huge Indian Premier League payday after this morning's auction. Ralph Ellis says it is just another reminder that England should not have sacked him...
A week ago Kevin Pietersen was valued at precisely nought pounds by England. Nought pounds and nought pence, not for Test cricket, for One Day cricket, or even for Twenty20.
This morning, having already confirmed a new contract as a Surrey player, KP has been bought for £880,000 by the Delhi Daredevils for this year's Indian Premier League.
He's played for the Daredevils before, of course. And it didn't take long for him to be telling his Twitter followers how pleased he is to be going back. "So happy to be back with the Delhi family! Lovely start to the day" was the verdict.
Now I know you are always warned that the value of an investment can go down as well as up, but not even on the stock exchange can two prices vary so greatly for a share of the business which Pietersen's batting has become. So the question remains - how can somebody judged to be worthless by the mandarins at Lord's have a near million pound price tag put on his head elsewhere?
The answer is that it's the difference between sentiment and cold, hard cash. England have put having a happy dressing room above finding a way to accommodate a hugely talented but sometimes absurdly difficult personality. In the IPL, where money counts, they want the talent first and then it's the captain's problem to fit him into his dressing room. And they take the view that dressing rooms tend to be happier places automatically when you are winning.
All the leaks from Lord's in the last week have been about what a disruptive and nasty influence Pietersen can be. England will have a happy camp going to the ICC World Cup in March even if they are now eighth in the betting to win it at 13.012/1. Just to back up that argument there have been a succession of stories trotted out, going right back to when he first came to play county cricket and Nottinghamshire's captain Jason Gallian famously flung KP's kit from the dressing room balcony.
But it struck me that Delhi wanted him back. In fact Sunrisers Hyderabad, who had him in their side when they were called Deccan Chargers, also wanted him back. They actually won the auction and forced Delhi to use a "right to match" mechanism to keep KP. If he is really that destructive, divisive and downright awkward then why were two teams ready to pay nearly a million pounds for the pleasure of him wrecking their dressing room too?
It's easy to think there is money swilling around in India. Pietersen's contract was big but it was dwarfed by the £1.4million paid by Royal Challengers Bangalore to sign Yuvraj Singh. But have a look at some of the people who went unsold.
Ian Bell had put his name down to make a few quid. He wasn't being greedy, his reserve price was the lowest possible at just under £100,000. There were no takers. Alex Hales, who is one of the explosive limited overs batsmen considered a potential replacement to KP in the England set up, was available for a minimum of £180,000. Again, nobody paid up.
Some big foreign names went unsold too. Australia's Cameron White wasn't wanted, and more surprisingly neither was Sri Lanka's imaginative Tillakaratne Dilshan. When the inventor of the 'Dilscoop' can't get a game in the world's most lucrative T20 competition, then what chance did Bell have anyway?
There are times when money talks, and cold hard cash says today that Kevin Pietersen remains one of the world's top T20 batsmen.
It's a shame that nobody at Lord's is listening.
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