'playing Under Dhoni an Incentive'

While Raina had gone for an impressive $650,000 prize tag per year with Chennai, Tiwari's $675,000 for Delhi also raised a few eyebrows.



"The money is certainly good, but more importantly, it gives a platform to a young cricketer like me to grab the attention. The added incentive is I will be playing under Dhoni, our one-day captain," Raina told Gulf News from India.



A comeback



Raina, who made a comeback to the national team for the Tri-series with a string of high scores in domestic cricket, did not get a single game while Tiwari filled in for an unfit Yuvraj Singh against Australia in their first match early last month.



It must have been quite a chastening experience for him, what with Brett Lee breathing fire under overcast conditions, and the young Tiwari could survive only a few deliveries.



"No excuses for failing in that match, but the whole of last month had been quite a learning experience for me. I have got valuable inputs on my batting from seniors like Tendulkar and Sehwag and it was a privilege to share the dressing room with them," said Tiwari, getting ready to leave Kolkata for a domestic fixture.



"However, the IPL offers a new challenge and I am really looking forward to it. Our team is quite a balanced one with a number of handy allrounders from Sri Lanka (Farveez Mahroof and Tilakaratne Dilshan)," said the 22-year-old.



Raina, meanwhile, was thrilled at the idea of playing Muttiah Muralitharan at the nets - and not as a rival. "We have a number of left-handers like Hayden, (Michael) Hussey, Fleming and Jacob Oram apart from myself... it's quite a relief we don't have to play against him."



Back on the subject of Dhoni's captaincy, the Uttar Pradesh batsman said: "He is the kind of captain who always has time for you. As a cricketer, he is smart and his reading of the game is also excellent. He used to spend a lot of time with young cricketers and was always ready to share a problem."