Mercurial former English player Kevin Pietersen and New Zealand sensation Corey Anderson will be among the 514 players who will go under the hammer at Wednesday’s Indian Premier League (IPL) auction.
A total of 192 slots will be available for bidding during the hotly contested auction which will see eight teams compete with each other to put together their dream team for the most sought after tournament in world cricket. The seventh season of the IPL tournament is expected to begin sometime in April.
A unique aspect of this edition will be that even the uncapped players numbering 255 will participate in the auction. Earlier, uncapped players selected for their respective teams received a fixed salary.
The amount of money available for the teams to bid for the players is ₹274.5 crore out of a total of ₹480 crore (₹60 crore per team). Seven out of eight teams have used up ₹205.5 crore to retain a total of 24 players including the likes of Indian captain MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle.
Delhi Daredevils is the only team which has not retained any players and hence the entire amount of ₹60 crore is available for it to put together a brand new team for the competition.
“The IPL auction is quite unique because no other tournament across the world including the English Premier League, conducts such an auction to bid for players,” Amrit Mathur, former COO of Delhi Daredevils told Business Line .
He hastened to add that the Justice Mukul Mudgal probe report on IPL match fixing will not overshadow the auction.
“It is unrelated, unconnected and will have no impact on the auction. We tend to overlook the fact that the auction is being held for the franchisees to put together their respective teams and there is nothing more to it.”
It will also be the first IPL auction where the bidding will be done in Indian rupees.
The auction will be conducted by Richard Madley who has been conducting the proceedings since 2008.
Out of 514 players available for auction, there will be 219 capped players including 169 Indian players and 50 overseas and 292 uncapped players which includes 255 Indians and 37 foreign players. Three players from associate nations are also available for auction.
The reserve prices for some of the marquee names such as Mahela Jayawardene, Mitchell Johnson, Jacques Kallis, Brendon McCullum and Michael Hussey have been set at ₹2 crore each.
Joker card The franchisees can also use their “joker’’ card to match any offer made to one of their former contracted players.
However, the teams which have more number of retained players will have that much less number of “joker’’ cards they can bring into play during the auction.
Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals have retained five players, the maximum number they can retain. But it also means that they will have limited budget to bid for other players.
A franchisee can have a maximum of 27 players including nine foreign players.
The players have been divided into sets of eight groups.
This includes two groups consisting of marquee players and the rest have been subdivided as per their skills like all rounders, batsmen and fast bowlers etc.