Pro Kabaddi 2019: Siddharth Desai - Get to know the PKL 2019 auction's costliest player

In just under a year since his Pro Kabaddi League debut, Siddharth Sirish Desai has already become a household name, due to his performances and the price he commanded in the Season 7 auction which was held recently.

Siddarth Desai went for a whopping ₹1.45 Cr to Telugu Titans, the team which has let go of their marquee player for six seasons - Rahul Chaudhari - in order to accommodate Siddharth Desai in the squad.

They started the bidding for Siddharth Desai at ₹100 Lakhs, when his base price was just ₹30 Lakhs, looked very determined during the bidding process, and never felt like they had second thoughts about securing the services of the breakout star for the upcoming season.

Having become the costliest player of Season 7, he would now be keenly watched in the upcoming edition, so let us know a little more about the man himself.

Hailing from the little-known city of Chandgad in Maharashtra, Kabaddi came naturally as the only prominent sport that Siddharth was exposed to during his childhood.

Coming from a village whose population was just over 300, Siddharth did not have access to bigger grounds for other sports and hence, his after-school game time was restricted to Kabaddi in the farmlands.

Both his father and brother have played Kabaddi in the past and that had an influence on Siddharth too. However, although he had a desire to make it big in the sport, Siddharth was asked to focus on his studies which led to the delay in the start of his career.

He was representing local clubs in Maharashtra and in 2018, he got an opportunity to play for his state Maharastra in the Nationals. It was a big moment for him as he was already 26 and was yet to play in PKL, and with his state cap, he was eligible to enter into the auctions.

Deprived of a leader in the raiding department after the exit of Rishank Devadiga, Anup Kumar and Shabeer Bapu, U Mumba were on the lookout for a top-class raider in the auctions and Siddarth Desai was their target. They were involved in a bidding war with a number of teams and eventually bought the player for ₹36.4 Lakhs, which was a big amount for a debutant.

Siddharth was quick to get into the groove as he picked up 28 raid points in his first two matches with a Super-10 in both matches. There was no stopping the debutant, as he went on to score 50 raid points in a very quick time and shared the record for achieving the feat with Rahul Chaudhari.

He was very quick to 100 points as well and soon became the only rookie to score 200 points in a season. With 218 points from his first season, Siddharth Desai also picked up the Best Debutant award last season.

In November last year, he suffered a shoulder injury which was a big reason why U Mumba decided to release him. However, the raider is confident of his return to full fitness before the event and is raring to go big for his new franchise, Telugu Titans.