Mar­lon Samuels, the West In­dies all­rounder, has been signed up by Pune War­riors for the next two years. Samuels be­comes the first play­er to be bought this year by War­riors, who had orig­i­nal­ly boy­cotted the auc­tion on Feb­ru­ary 4, but were even­tu­al­ly grant­ed an ex­tend­ed win­dow for trad­ing till Feb­ru­ary 29. Samuels' deal has left War­riors with three more slots for over­seas play­ers af­ter Aus­tralia all­rounder Mitchell Marsh was ruled out of the IPL with a back in­jury (see side­bar). The War­riors have al­ready lost Aus­tralia wick­et­keep­er Tim Paine to in­jury and bought out West In­dies fast bowler Jerome Tay­lor's con­tract. With the IPL sea­son clash­ing with West In­dies' home se­ries against Aus­tralia in March-April and then the away tour of Eng­land in May, Samuels will be avail­able to play for War­riors for the first half of the tour­na­ment. "He has agreed to play for the first ten-odd match­es," a War­riors of­fi­cial told ES­P­N­cricin­fo. For Samuels to be avail­able for that du­ra­tion, he will have to skip the home Tests against Aus­tralia.