PV Sindhu, Saina retained by PBL teams, get hikes

HYDERABAD: PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal were retained by their respective franchises at the players auction of the PBL. Each retained player gets a 25 per cent hike in his/her salary from last year, while players who are bought by using the‘ Right-To-Match’ card only get a 10 percent increase from the last year’s selling price.

Defending champions Chennai Smashers retained Olympic silver medal list Sindhu for ~48.75 lakh.

Saina, who had returned with a bronze medal from Glasgow, was retained for ~ 41,25,000. She was retained by Awad he Warriors for the base price of ~ 33 lakhs last season. Srikanth will also play for his old team Awad he Warriors after they used the ‘Right To Match’ card.

He will now make ~56,10,000. Among others, doubles players-India’s Satwik Sairaj, Korea’ s Lee Young Dae and Russia’ s Vladimir Ivanov -- were all retained by their old teams and were not be part of the auction.

The first player togo under the hammer was the women’ s world no. 1 Tai Tzu Ying who was bought by Ahmedabad Smash Masters for ~ 52 lakhs. Carolina Marin from Spain was bought by Hyderabad Hunters for a base price of ~ 50 lakhs.