Welsh Fire were the big spenders in the morning session of The Hundred auction, splashing £540,000 on Joe Root and Jordan Cox.
Wicket-keeper-batter Cox – who was the leading run scorer in last year’s Hundred competition – fetched the highest price before the lunch break, being snapped up by the Cardiff-based franchise for £300,000.
Former England Test captain Root went for £240,000 in the first auction week of its kind for the competition.
It took Welsh’s spending to over £500,000 for just two players.
Welsh Fire is the only one of the eight Hundred franchises to have sold exactly 50 per cent of its stake to overseas investors, with other teams choosing to sell a majority or minority holding.
That 50 per cent was sold to American-Indian Sanjay Govil, who also owns the Major League Cricket team Washington Freedom.
Root and Cox will join Phil Salt and Chris Woakes in a strong Cardiff team, while other players will be added to the team throughout the auction in Piccadilly on Thursday.
Coles fetches top price in Hundred auction
Uncapped English all-rounder James Coles, 21, fetched the biggest price in the men’s auction, with London Spirit winning his services for £390,000.
Coles, who made his debut for Sussex aged 16, has not yet featured for senior England teams but will earn more than many of the national set-up in this year’s Hundred.
Usman Tariq was sold for £140,000 to Birmingham Phoenix, despite concerns that Indian investors in The Hundred would shun Pakistani players.
Sunrisers Leeds then won a bidding war for Pakistan leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed with a £190,000 offer.
The Knighthead Capital-invested franchise, based out of Edgbaston, fended off Trent Rockets – who also have American investors under a Todd Boehly consortium – to win the services of Tariq.
It comes after the England and Wales Cricket Board warned teams with investment from companies who operate in the Indian Premier League that they could not discriminate against Pakistani players.
The Hundred Auction sees the eight franchise teams spend up to their salary cap of over £2m, with limits placed on the amount of overseas players allowed in each outfit.
Jonny Bairstow (£160,000, London Spirit), Adil Rashid (£250,000, Southern Brave), James Vince (£190,000, MI London), Aiden Markram (£200,000, Manchester Super Giants) and David Miller (£110,000, Southern Brave) were the other so-called hero players alongside Cox and Root.
Haris Rauf – the only Pakistani hero player – and New Zealand’s Daryl Mitchell went unsold in the morning.
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