Rising

If ever there was a man in Indian cricket, who put team before self it has to be none other than VVS Laxman who surrendered his icon status just a day before the IPL players' bids.

VVS Laxman was among the final few to be elevated to the icon status, which the Hyderabad team franchisee owners, Deccan Chronicle had demanded from the IPL governing council.

But on Tuesday, VVS Laxman gave it away so that his team could have a larger budget for buying players at the auction on Wednesday.

"Laxman has been named as captain of the Hyderabad team. He gave away the icon status as he wanted Hyderabad to have a larger budget. He showed fine sportsman's spirit," said P K Iyer, managing director of Deccan Chronicle, after buying the veteran cricketer for USD 375,000.

Laxman's move enabled Hyderabad to successfully bid USD 1.35 million for Andrew Symonds and also pick up players like RP Singh, Rohit Sharma, Adam Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi and Herschelle Gibbs among others.

The IPL has conferred icon status on Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh to rule them out of the auctioning process and then added Virender Sehwag to that list when Delhi franchisees GMR demanded it.

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