Kevin Pietersen has re-signed for the Delhi Daredevils as he continues to plan for life after England.

Pietersen is free for the first time to feature in a full Indian Premier League campaign, following his axing as a contracted England player at the age of 33 which has effectively signalled the end of his international career.

The IPL announced on its official Twitter feed on Wednesday morning that Pietersen would play for the Daredevils in the 2014 season. The team agreed to pay 90million Indian rupees (£880,000) for Pietersen at the pre-season auction.

The IPL said in a tweet: "@KP24 will play for @DelhiDaredevils who have snapped him up for Rs. 900 lacs using their right to match card against SRH. #IPLAuction"

The 'Right to Match' system has been introduced to this year's IPL auction as a means for teams to buy back up to five of their core players from previous campaigns.

The Daredevils announced last month that they had opted not to retain any of their players, including Pietersen. Since then, however, Pietersen has become available to play a full IPL campaign following the cancellation of his central contract, and Delhi opted to match the bid made by rivals Sunrisers Hyderabad.

Pietersen was not the Daredevils' most expensive acquisition, however, as they invested 125million rupees (£1.2million) in Indian wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik. They also recruited Indian opening batsman Murali Vijay and South African JP Duminy.

As of 05.30 GMT, the most expensive player in the auction was Yuvraj Singh, who signed for Royal Challengers Bangalore for 140million Indian rupees (£1.4million). That was still shy of the £1.5million paid by Kolkata Knight Riders for Gautam Gambhir in the 2011 auction.

Glenn Maxwell, who could yet rejoin Hampshire for this year’s T20 Blast, was bought for $1m for the second year running, with Kings XI Punjab the top bidders for his services.

Mascarenhas’s former franchise has also bought George Bailey for $541,000 as well as Mitchell Johnson for $1,083,000.

But Dimi Mascarenhas will be hoping to go into the pot for tomorrow's second auction after failing to attract a buyer.
 
Neil McKenzie, another former Hampshire player integral to the county’s t20 success over the last few years, had the same base price as Mascarenhas but was also ignored, along with Simon Jones and Imran Tahir.

The IPL season begins in April. As well as previously playing for the Daredevils, Pietersen has also featured in the IPL for Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The Sunrisers went in for another explosive batsman after missing out on Pietersen, signing Australian David Warner for 55million rupees (£530,000) while England's Ashes nemesis Mitchell Johnson signed for Kings XI Punjab for 65million rupees (£630,000).

Pietersen's fee was lower than some estimates made prior to the auction, with former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi telling the BBC last week that he thought the player could attract a record bid in the region of 3million US dollars (£1.8million).

Pietersen was unable to feature at all for Delhi last year because of a knee injury which kept him out of all cricket for three months.

Pietersen has moved quickly to put plans in place for his future, after it was announced on Monday that he had agreed a deal to play for Surrey in the new domestic T20 Blast tournament.

The deal also included scope for Pietersen to play for Surrey in the County Championship. Pietersen had previously represented Surrey under an agreement struck as part of his central contract with the ECB.