Ricky Ponting's verdict on PBKS' willingness to go all out for Rishabh Pant in auction: 'We've spoken...'

The highly anticipated 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) mega auction is here, and fans can expect plenty of surprises and intense bidding wars at the Abady Al Johar Arena in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Rishabh Pant, fresh off being released by Delhi Capitals, is generating a lot of buzz heading into the auction. Speculations suggest that Punjab Kings may make a strong play for Pant, especially considering their hefty auction purse. It wouldn't be surprising to see Pant donning the Punjab Kings jersey in the upcoming season.

Punjab Kings' newly-appointed head coach Ricky Ponting who flew down to Jeddah on Saturday has now revealed whether he will look to go after Pant in the mega auction.

Earlier, Pant and Ponting worked together at Delhi Capitals. However, first Ponting left as the coach of the franchise and then Pant also decided to enter the auction pool.

"Oh look, we've spoken about lots of players in the auction. I mean, Rishabh is going to be a target for most teams, you'd think," Ponting told Star Sports.

"Certainly the ones that have kept a big enough purse. So we go into the auction with the biggest purse, but when you think about that, when you break it down, we've only kept the two players," he added.

Rishabh Pant is a part of Marquee Set 1 in the auction, and he has set his base price as INR 2 crore. Most of the cricket pundits are predicting Pant to the costliest pick of the auction.

Speaking further about Pant, Ponting said, "So by the time we've bought another three or four players, our purse is going to be back the same as everyone else's. So it's not that big of an advantage, only the fact that we probably should be able to lock away our top three or four picks going into the auction."

"So yeah, look, we've spoken about Rishabh, we've spoken about lots of players, and now we have to make sure that we just stick to our strategy," he added.

Heading into the auction, Punjab Kings retained just two players and both of them are uncapped. The franchise decided to stick with Shashank Singh and Prabhsimran Singh.

Punjab Kings have their auction purse as INR 110.5 crore, the most of all teams. However, the franchise needs to buy a minimum of 16 players to fill their squad

The mega auction will start at 3:30 PM IST, and Rishabh Pant will be coming up in the Marquee Set 1, alongside the likes of KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer.