Cricketer claims mistaken identity cost him IPL contract

A curious case of mistaken identity looks to have cost Indian cricketer Harpreet Singh at the recent IPL player auction.

On the morning of the IPL auction, a number of Indian news outlets incorrectly reported that batsman Harpreet Singh had been arrested after an incident at a railway station in Mumbai.

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However it was in fact a cricketer named Harmeet Singh, a left-arm spinner, who'd been taken into custody.

The reporting of the arrest was later corrected, but Harpreet says the damage had already been done.

Previously contracted with the Kolkata Knight Riders and Pune Warriors, Harpreet entered himself into the IPL auction at a base price of around AU$39,000 after top-scoring in the recent domestic Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy.

The 24-year-old thought he was a good chance of being picked up again but says the misreporting of the incident may have cost him a contract.

"I'm mentally disturbed," Harpreet told The Indian Express.

"How can one clear that? I am getting calls from everyone asking 'what have you done?'

"I was hoping to be picked up at the IPL auction ... when my name came, the franchises must have felt 'why take a player who is in police custody?'

"I am not bothered about IPL now, it's gone. But even if you run a search on my name on Google, the first thing that comes up is that I was arrested."

The Indian Express said an unnamed franchise were keen to purchase Harpreet before the incorrect reports.

"We wanted to buy him, but as news came of Harpreet's arrest, we decided not to do so since it would give the franchise a bad image," the publication quoted an unknown official.

"But later, when the auction got over, we came to know it was Harmeet and not Harpreet."

Harpreet scored 62, 48, 9 and 92 in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and scored 208 runs at 69 in last year's competition.