Delhi: There are some questions to IPL which neither have any answer nor go away from the discussion. One such question is from the day when teams were taking uncapped players for the first season of IPL. There was no auction because the fees were fixed. Now all that had to be decided was who would be the first player to choose, then whose turn would be next and so on….

Let us tell you that the first number was Delhi Daredevils (they are now Delhi Capitals) and despite the presence of young Virat Kohli (by then India had won the Under-19 World Cup under his captaincy and his excellent batting was also known) in the pool of available uncapped players, they chose fast pacer Pradeep Sangwan. The second number was Vijay Mallya who was present there from RCB and he chose Virat Kohli without any delay.

This was such a selection, which not only rewrote the history of RCB and IPL. Now playing in the 19th season of IPL, Virat Kohli has never appeared in the auction list till date. RCB may not have won the IPL title in the first 17 seasons, but Virat Kohli became the ‘face’ of this team and without him, RCB has no identity.

So the question is, how did the owners of Delhi franchise commit such a big scam that Virat Kohli was just one ‘yes’ away from them but Virat Kohli was not their first choice. If any team owner regretted any decision in IPL and is still regretting it till date, then it is the decision of not taking Virat Kohli. Why did the team do this? There are answers to this question but the truth is that the team owners themselves do not know how they did this? Today, a book will have to be written to record Virat Kohli’s record in IPL.

Last year, Delhi Daredevils’ 2008 icon player and captain Virender Sehwag answered the reason behind not selecting Virat Kohli in the IPL draft. According to him, Delhi needed more to strengthen its bowling and that is why Pradeep Sangwan was selected. Apart from Sehwag, the team then had players like Gautam Gambhir, Shikhar Dhawan, AB de Villiers, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Dinesh Karthik and Manoj Tiwari in batting. Therefore, the team’s focus was on further improving its bowling. Pradeep Sangwan also shone in the 2008 Under-19 World Cup not only with his disciplined bowling, his bowling analysis in the final was 5-2-14-0.

The team then needed another young bowler along with Yo Mahesh. Records now show that Pradeep Sangwan played for 5 teams but his IPL career lasted only 42 matches in which he took 38 wickets. Out of these, he took 15 wickets in IPL 2009 due to which the team remained on top in the league round. This is the same Pradeep Sangwan who failed the doping test in 2013 and was banned for 15 months. What’s more, India’s selectors never called him.

Delhi spent Rs 12 lakh for Pradeep Sangwan and Royal Challengers Bangalore also spent the same amount on Virat Kohli. Perhaps there is no need to tell what Virat Kohli has done in cricket and then the question arose that how did the owner of Delhi franchise make a mistake in identifying a talent like Virat Kohli? The record of scoring most runs in IPL is in the name of Virat Kohli and the presence of Virat Kohli in the team also has a special contribution in the huge brand value of RCB. Even the Delhi team ignored Virat Kohli, also from Delhi.

TA Shekhar was then the Cricket Operations Chief of Delhi Daredevils and the team had shortlisted Virat Kohli, Pradeep Sangwan and Tanmay Srivastava from the Under-22 category. The truth is that to lure these Under-19 players, some franchises had even sent their people to Malaysia to talk to the Indian players playing in the Under-19 World Cup. BCCI got wind of this and then it was decided that these players would be given to the teams only through draft. A lottery was held to decide the number of players for the teams. Delhi was first but did not take any advantage of it. What happened after this is history and perhaps the biggest mistake in the history of IPL.