Mahendra Singh Dhoni-highest paid

Mahendra Singh Dhoni attracted the highest price of $1.5 million or €1.02 million per season in Wednesday's player auction for the lucrative new Indian Premier League.

Chennai acquired the services of India limited-overs captain Dhoni, a wicketkeeper-batsman, on a three-year contract to kickstart the Twenty20 IPL competition.

The bidding for Dhoni was aggressive with the last leg closely fought between southern India's Chennai and western metropolis of Mumbai. All teams jointly burst into applause when Chennai first raised the bid to $1million.

Australia allrounder Andrew Symonds attracted the next highest price - $1.35 million or €920,000 from Hyderabad, more than five times his base price where bidding began.

Bids for Symonds came in fast, with Hyderabad edging out Mumbai to secure his services.

Sri Lanka's 38-year-old opening batsman and former skipper Sanath Jayasuriya went for $975,000 or €661,380 to Mumbai, which also spent lavishly on India offspinner Harbhajan Singh.

India allrounder Irfan Pathan attracted a bid of $925,000 or €627,458.96 from Mohali, while South African Jacques Kallis was sold for $900,000 or €610,500.61 to Bangalore.

Mohali team's owners were jubilant with the successful bid of $900,000 €610,500 for Australia paceman Brett Lee, with businessman Ness Wadia pumping his fist and hugging partner and Bollywood actress Preity Zinta.

Australia captain Ricky Ponting went to Calcutta, only modestly over his starting price. The Jaipur team was among the first to bid for Ponting, but Calcutta won the bidding contest after billionaire distiller Vijay Mallya's Bangalore team bowed out.

The selection of Ponting will make for a collection of strong leaders at Calcutta, which is expected to be coached by former Australia coach John Buchanan, and which also has India's former test captain Sourav Ganguly.

There was the possibility of leadership friction at Jaipur, where retired Australian legspin great Shane Warne will join South Africa captain Graeme Smith, with the pair having previously engaged in some strong verbal exchanges, on and off the field.

Australia's retiring wicketkeeper-batsman Adam Gilchrist (Hyderabad), Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara (Mohali) also fetched big sums, while Calcutta made successful big bids for New Zealand's Brendon McCullum and Chris Gayle of the West Indies.

Dhoni, Gilchrist and Sri Lanka spinner Muttiah Muralitharan - who went to Chennai - were among the six "marquee players" who were pegged as the biggest drawcards and started the bidding session at a Mumbai hotel.

Pakistan skipper Shoaib Malik will be joined at Delhi by compatriot Mohammad Asif. Pakistan allrounder Shahid Afridi went to Hyderabad and middle-order batsman Younis Khan to Jaipur.

New Zealanders Jacob Oram and Daniel Vettori attracted aggressive bidding before Oram was acquired by Chennai and Vettori by Delhi. Former Black Caps skipper Stephen Fleming was snapped up by Chennai at his base price.

Australia batsman Michael Hussey, Pakistan's Mohammad Yousuf, retired Australian strike bowler Glenn McGrath and Zimbabwe wicketkeeper Tatenda Taibu did not attract their reserve price and were placed in the reserve pool.

Bids for reserve pool players will be made at the end of the auction.

Yousuf is fighting a legal battle against the rebel Indian Cricket League, which already secured his signing, while McGrath has not played international cricket for more than a year. He had more test wickets than any other fast bowler.

The winning bids were disclosed by Lalit Modi, chairman of the IPL governing body.

"We're all very excited, this is a tremendous day for world cricket," Modi said before the auction began.

All bidding is being done electronically in a sealed room, where eight teams owned by a variety of Indian companies in the petrochemical, cement and infrastructure businesses are vying for 78 of the world's finest cricketers.

India's star batsmen Rahul Dravid and Ganguly attended the auction along with businessman Mallya, and Bollywood movie stars Shah Rukh Khan.

The IPL reserved four "icon" players from the auction - team captains Ganguly (Calcutta), Yuvraj Singh (Mohali), Sachin Tendulkar (Mumbai) and Dravid (Bangalore) - who are guaranteed 15 percent more than the highest-paid player at their franchise. Virender Sehwag was added to the "icon" list on a request from the Delhi squad ahead of the bidding.