New Delhi, 15 November (HS). The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has informed the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises that there will be two sets of marquee players in the upcoming player auction. This auction will be held on 24 and 25 November in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
According to a Cricbuzz report, the BCCI has told the franchises preparing for the auction that there will be two marquee lists, with each set having 8-9 players. While it is not unusual for a mega-auction to have two elite lists, the previous major auction in 2022 had only one. However, there were two sets in the 2018 and 2014 auctions.
Players who have made it to the elite grade include Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh, R Ashwin, Mitchell Starc and Jos Buttler. Ben Stokes could also make the cut, but he has not registered for this year’s auction, which will be held at Jeddah’s Abadi Al Johar Arena, also known as the Benchmark Arena.
Each marquee player has given himself a base price of Rs 2 crore, with the hope being that by the end of the first two sets, 30 to 50 per cent of the available auction purse will be spent. Each franchise is likely to acquire at least two big names, which could cost them an average of Rs 20-25 crore, taking the total available purse to Rs 200-250 crore from Rs 641.5 crore. . The franchise has already spent Rs 558.5 crore out of the allowed Rs 1200 crore on retention recently.
The two-day auction proceedings will be decided by the bids for the first two sets of players, most of whom are expected to be sold. Punjab Kings, who have the biggest bank deposits of Rs 110.5 crore, are expected to get the best of the best players.
The exact order of bidding and the marquee list will be released by the BCCI in the next few days. The BCCI recently circulated a register of 1,574 names, which includes 1,165 Indian players and 409 foreign players. The list includes 320 capped, 1224 uncapped and 30 associate players. A total of 46 players have been retained by the franchise.
BCCI has asked the franchises to suggest new names that they want to include in the auction. The franchises have also been asked to respond to the register by November 12 with the list of players they want to include in the final list. If each franchise has a maximum of 25 players in its squad, then 204 players will be dealt in the auction, of which up to 70 could be foreign players.
List of players in the auction register:
Caped Indians (48 players)
Capped Internationals (272 players)
Associate (30 players)
Uncapped Indians who were part of the last IPL season (152 players)
Uncapped Internationals who were part of the last IPL season (3 players)
Uncapped Indians (965 players)
Uncapped Internationals (104 players)
