Chennai: Luke Pomersbach had been grabbing a lot of eyeballs in the past, but only because of wrong reasons. He was even charged with molesting a woman and assaulting her fiancé at a hotel in New Delhi.

However, the Australian cricketer is all set to represent Kings XI Punjab in the sixth edition as he was bought for $300,000 which was six times over his base price of $50,000.

After five batsmen went unsold in quick succession, a fierce battle was witnessed when Pomersbach’s name was pulled out of the bag. Mumbai’s Nita Ambani and Punjab’s Preity Zinta went all out for Pomersbach, who played for the RCB last year. He has played for Punjab before in 2008 and 2009 before switching to RCB.

Pomersbach, was the second leading run scorer in the recently-concluded Big Bash League that made him one of the players to look forward to before this IPL auction and the way franchises were ready to place their money on him was enough to show his importance as a player.

IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla said the league doesn’t have control over what players do off the field. “We are only responsible for the behavior of players on the field. It’s not our problem if someone does something off the field. The case of molestation was settled out of court with the mutual understanding of both the parties at the end,” said Shukla.