Each franchise will have a purse of $9 million to spend at the auction and the cap will get smaller depending on the number of players a team decides to retain.
The roadmap for the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is set, more or less. Even the price tag for each player has been fixed. The auction, set for January 8 and 9, will have over 160 players on the roster. There are, of course, no Pakistani players in the list.
According to a document, apparently prepared by Mohinder Amarnath and Ravi Shastri, there are eight players in the top layer with $400,000 as base money. Converted into rupees, that is Rs2 crore.
The names in this rung are the obvious ones — Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Ab de Villiers, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Shane Watson.
In the next rung ($3,00,000) are top Lankans and other prominent players like Muttiah Muralitharan, Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Lasith Malinga, Jacques Kallis, Kevin Pietersen, Chris Gayle and Andrew Symonds. And yes, Kieron Pollard, unofficially considered as the costliest IPL player too is in this bracket. Among the Indians are Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina and Zaheer Khan.
In the next group are yesteryear stars like Sourav Ganguly. He has a floor price of $200,000. Anil Kumble is bracketed alongside Dada. Even Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman are in this bracket. The others in this group are Adam Gilchrist, Gautam Gambhir, Murali Vijay, Pragyan Ojha, S Sreesanth and Virat Kohli. Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting is also in this category.
For players like Tendulkar, Dhoni and, may be, even Pollard and Sehwag, the entire exercise may not be of any consequence. After all, they are expected to be retained. The franchises will have to submit their retention list by December 5.
Each franchise will have a purse of $9 million to spend at the auction and the cap will get smaller depending on the number of players a team decides to retain.
Sources say it is a provisional list with scope for changes, but it is unlikely that the price tag will see too many alterations. In fact, members of the governing council say most players wanted to be given a low floor price. “Our understanding is that the players did not want to have a high base price so that they don’t remain unsold,” said a source in the GC. This is in stark contrast to the IPL 2 auction when players like Michael Clarke wanted to have a base price of $1 million.
The list was presented to the GC members who met in Mumbai on November 17.
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