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'Nauseous, exhausted': Jhye's life-changing IPL payday

Scorchers quick recounts remarkable experience of watching the auction, and looks ahead to Aussie assignments as new and refreshing challenges

Shoulder surgery and endless rehabilitation have not been able to dampen Jhye Richardson's spirit, but Australian cricket's latest instant multi-millionaire has just about been defeated by the Indian Premier League auction.

It turns out getting bought for a "life-changing" A$2.48 million in one of sport's most extraordinary off-field spectacles is not as much fun – initially, anyway – for those being sold off as it is for the millions watching on around the world.

Richardson was in quarantine in a Christchurch hotel room on a Discord video call with his mates from hometown Perth as they tuned into the broadcast of the IPL auction in Chennai.

Like many other non-Indians, the 24-year-old didn't know a lakh from a crore and had been scribbling furiously with trembling hands on loose paper trying to figure out how many Indian Rupees go into an Aussie dollar.

Down the hallway, Riley Meredith, bought not long after for $1.42m, was plugging the figures into an online currency converter.

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"My name came up and I got this wave of (nausea) just not knowing what to expect," Richardson told reporters via video conference.

"For the first, what to me felt like about 20 minutes, no one put their paddle up and it's one of those things where you're just like, 'Oh no'. You have no idea what's going to happen.

"Then the first paddle went up, which was probably (only) like 10 seconds or five seconds (later), but it felt like a lifetime."

Not even two minutes after his name was read aloud by the auctioneer, the hammer went down and an overawed Richardson had been bought by Kings XI Punjab for 14 crore – nearly 10 times his base price.

The fast bowler will be vying to play his first game for Australia in nearly a year when they emerge from their fortnight of quarantine and begin their T20 series against New Zealand at Hagley Oval on Monday.

It's a five-game tour, but for Richardson, it may as well be six.

"I feel like I played a game yesterday," he said. "I mentally exhausted myself of feeling all these emotions, of feeling sick and excited.

"The emotions just take over and you forget – you double check (the price he was bought for), you triple check it, you quadruple check it. It took a moment and it's still sinking in at the moment.

"I almost blanked. I was watching it, but I felt like I wasn't actually watching it. After everything happened you're obviously really, really excited but then you just hit this massive wall.

"It was pretty late at night for us in New Zealand. I had all these messages coming through on my phone and then I completely crashed."

The payday is reward for a dominant comeback KFC BBL season with the Perth Scorchers, after Richardson last year went under the knife to fix a recurring right shoulder problem that also dogged him the previous summer and has severely limited his ability to throw.

Richardson initially dislocated the joint when he dived while fielding in a one-dayer against Pakistan in Sharjah in March 2019, ruling him out of the ODI World Cup and Ashes having looked odds on to be picked for both.

Having taken eight wickets at 21.12 on a preceding 2019 ODI series win in India, Richardson's skiddy pace looms as a major weapon not only for the upcoming IPL, which is expected to begin in April, but also potentially for the T20 World Cup in India later this year.

"The goal for me is to play more Test cricket but whilst I'm not playing in that, what's happening in front of me is the most important thing and for me at the moment, that's T20 cricket," he said.

"Before my shoulder I had a few variations that I liked to play around with and the Indian wickets suited that.

"It just creates a new challenge, doesn't it? The Indian wickets over there are so different to Australian wickets.

"From a team perspective we always speak so much about adaptability and how we can change to the conditions – that's really important. It's just another challenge I like to embrace."

Qantas T20I tour of New Zealand 2021

Australia squad: Aaron Finch (c), Ashton Agar, Jason Behrendorff, Mitchell Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Ben McDermott, Riley Meredith, Josh Philippe, Jhye Richardson, Kane Richardson, Daniel Sams, Tanveer Sangha, D'Arcy Short, Marcus Stoinis, Ashton Turner, Andrew Tye, Matthew Wade, Adam Zampa.

New Zealand squad: Kane Williamson (c), Hamish Bennett, Trent Boult, Mark Chapman, Devon Conway, *Martin Guptill (pending fitness test), Kyle Jamieson, Jimmy Neesham, Glenn Phillips, Mitchell Santner, Tim Seifert (wk), Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee. *Finn Allen (on stand-by for Guptill)

1st T20: February 22, Hagley Oval, Christchurch, 5pm AEDT

2nd T20: February 25, University of Otago Oval, Dunedin, 12noon AEDT

3rd T20: March 03, Sky Stadium, Wellington, 5pm AEDT

4th T20: March 05, Eden Park, Auckland, 5pm AEDT

5th T20: March 07, Bay Oval, Tauranga, 12noon AEDT

All matches will be shown live in Australia on Fox Cricket and Kayo