IPL auction in the times of uncertainty

The Indian Premier League's auctions to be held in Jaipur on Tuesday presents a concern for the franchises.

Even as they pick the players up spending huge sums, the team owners would not be sure about the kind of pitches they would be playing on.

The franchises are yet to hear from the IPL Governing Council whether the tournament would be shifted to South Africa, similar to the way it was done during the general Lok Sabha elections in 2009 and to UAE in 2014.

The talk of UAE playing host again has also surfaced off late.

Imagine the plight of team owners or the support staff, who were spending sleepless nights in the run up to pick a squad without knowing the sort of conditions they would get. To add to the confusion, there are star players who will have to miss the later portion of the IPL as they have to head back to their respective countries for camps before the 2019 ICC World Cup.

And if these two reasons are not enough, then domestic T20 tournament (Syed Mushtaq Ali) will be played a month before the IPL thus hampering the franchises efforts to scout for local talents.

A day ahead of the auctions in the Pink City, the permutations and combinations where key Indian players could be asked to rest few matches keeping in mind the workload issue ahead of the next WC are still been discussed amongst the owners and coaches.

This particular reason, however, could well be a windfall for some of the domestic players and fringe players from overseas who will be available for the entire duration of IPL.

CSK all ready

A total of 346 cricketers, including 228 Indians, will go under the hammer on Tuesday.

There was a total of around 1,003 players initially registered for the auction, but the final list was released with a figure of 350, including the last-minute entry of four players. This will include the 119 capped, 229 uncapped and two associate nation players available for auctions.

The only team which retained their core has been the most successful franchisee of the IPL, Chennai Super Kings. And the defending champions will have a purse of Rs 8.4 crore to pick the rest.

Knowing well that CSK are in search of an Indian pacer and spinner, the names of Jaydev Unadkat and Varun Chakravarthy (uncapped) are in the circulation. CSK also has the advantage over other teams because most of their retained star players are available for the entire duration, barring South Africans Faf du Plessis and Lungi Ngidi.

For the rest, this auction will come down to finding like-for-like replacements for their stars. The franchises have been told that Australian players won't be available after April 23, while England and Sri Lanka boards have fixed May 6 as the deadline. However, the South Africans will be available till May 10 with players from New Zealand and West Indies being the only ones who will get to feature the entire duration of the tournament.

This will certainly translate into a greater demand for Kiwi players like Martin Guptill, Glenn Philips, Luke Ronchi, Corey Anderson and Brendon McCullum or the West Indian players like Shimron Hetmyer and Nicholas Pooran who will be available for the entire IPL duration.

And with the possibility of the IPL going to South Africa, some of their players who had a good outing in Mzansi T20 League like Reeza Hendricks, Lutho Sipamla, Jon-Jon Smuts, Johannes Malan, Heinrich Klaasen, Aiden Markram are expected to be in demand during the auction.

From the Indian side, the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Axar Patel, Manoj Tiwary and Varun Aaron are expected to get the attention of team owners. This despite the fact that Yuvraj, who has not been even playing all domestic games for his home state Punjab, is at least expected to go at his base price of Rs 1 crore.

DID YOU KNOW?

Celebrity auctioneer Richard Madley, who had conducted all IPL player auctions since the tournament's inception in 2008, would be replaced by Hugh Edmeades, an independent fine art, classic car and charity auctioneer.