Legends of Sports

Former India cricket captain Sourav Ganguly, who found no takers at this year's Indian Premier League player auction, has been signed up by under pressure franchise Pune Warriors. Ganguly, who played for his home team Kolkata in the first three editions of the competition, replaces the injured Ashish Nehra ahead of Pune's game against table-toppers Mumbai Indians on Wednesday. The Yuvraj Singh-led Pune Warriors are languishing at the bottom of the IPL table after six consecutive losses in the money-spinning Twenty20 competition.

"We were in talks with Ganguly and we decided that the amount of experience that he has will no doubt help the team," Pune Warriors director Abhijit Sarkar said Tuesday."We signed him up on Monday night. He will join us as soon as possible and start practicing with the team."Ganguly, 38, was listed with a base price of $400,000 in the player auction in January but went unsold despite his good record as a batsman and captain. The left-hander however has an average IPL record, having scored 1,031 runs at an average of 28.