Royal Challengers Bangalore picked up paceman Mills - who played briefly for the Brisbane Heat this summer - for $2.3m, the most ever paid to a specialist bowler, and a notable 24 times his base price.

The 24-year old feared his career was over two years ago when he was diagnosed with a congenital back condition but has instead shot to T20 glory after the astonishing bid.

Stokes, recently appointed England vice-captain, has yet to play in the sport's glamour Twenty20 league but his heavy hitting and penetrating medium pace made him a coveted signing, and he was snapped up for the highest price of the day at $2.8 million by the Rising Pune Supergiants.

"It's been a pretty incredible week and, considering you normally have your most exciting times when you're playing, it's been an amazing and interesting few days," Stokes said.

"I set my alarm for 3.30am, got up and waited about 40 minutes for my turn in the auction. I was anxious, not really knowing what would happen.

"I was following it on Twitter, I didn't actually see it live. I kept on refreshing my notifications, I saw people were tweeting and then I realised that Pune had got me."

"I wasn't sure how much a Crore was, people were retweeting stuff, it was complete carnage," he said. "I still haven't seen the footage.

"It's a life changing amount of money, I can't really say more than that. I'm really thankful and grateful for how it went this morning. I'm struggling to put it into words."

For Mills, his only real aspiration was to secure employment between now and the start of Sussex's NatWest T20 Blast campaign in the English season.

"I can't believe it. I can't put into words what happened," he said. "I did not see this coming and it took a while for it to sink in. It has been a crazy day.

"I was the lowest of the base prices because I just wanted to get picked up by a team. I didn't want to wait until July for my next cricket.

"The bidding was quite slow but once it hit 10 Crore I knew it was big money, but it kept going."