Kings XI Punjab has the most money available to spend at this year’s auction © ESPNcricinfo Ltd
A total of 351 players which includes 122 capped internationals will feature in the IPL players auction, scheduled to be held in Bangalore on February 20. This final list has been pruned from the original size of 799 after the eight franchises submitted their wishlists to the IPL.
Sudeep Tyagi, who has played four ODIs, is the solitary player to have been cut from the original list of 24 capped Indian players, all of whom, barring strike bowler Ishant Sharma, have listed a base price of INR 30 lakh. Ishant is one of the seven internationals to have put a maximum base price of INR 2 crore – approximately US $298,000 – for the tenth player auction. The other six include three England players in Ben Stokes, Eoin Morgan and Chris Woakes, the two Australian fast men Mitchell Johnson and Pat Cummins and Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews.
In the initial list there were a total of 160 capped players from nine countries, excluding Pakistan, and 639 uncapped ones. The final list also contains six entries from the Associates, including five Afghanistan players: captain Asghar Stanikzai, Mohammad Nabi, Mohammad Shahzad, Rashid Khan and Dawlat Zadran. Shahzad and Rashid have the highest base prices among the five at INR 50 lakh. A single entry from UAE, batsman Chirag Suri, is the other Associate player on the list.
Considering they will have to put a majority of their players back into the auction in 2018, some franchise officials said they would not be too aggressive in buying players this season. However, they did agree that there would be considerable interest in the English players.
Although the IPL is yet to decide on the retention rules, franchises expect the right-to-match option to be available. This allows franchises to buy back a specific number of the players they have released for the auction by matching the highest bid those players attract. If they match the bid, they win the player.
Nagraj Gollapudi is a senior assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo