The Indian Premier League (IPL) management has reportedly asked its ten franchises to submit their list of retained players by November 15 with the upcoming mini-auction likely to be held in the third week of December.
Unlike the mega auction last year, when two new franchises were added and the old eight teams could retain a maximum of four players, there is no such cap for the mini-auction ahead of IPL 2023. Meanwhile, during the upcoming mini-auction, the teams will get extra Rs 5 crore, in addition to the money left over from the previous auction, to spend which will make the overall auction purse Rs 95 crore, an ESPNcricinfo report said.
Notably, Punjab Kings (PBKS) had the largest purse left – Rs 3.45 crore – after last year’s auction, while Lucknow Super Giants had exhausted their entire purse. On the other hand, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) had Rs 2.95 crore remaining, followed by Royal Challengers Bangalore (Rs 1.55 crore), Rajasthan Royals (Rs 0.95 crore) and Kolkata Knight Riders (Rs 0.45 crore).
On the other hand, defending champions Gujarat Titans are left with Rs 0.15 crore while three teams – Mumbai Indians, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals – had Rs 0.10 crore.
Despite franchises having smaller purses, mini-auctions have produced some of the most expensive buys in the past seasons and the likes of Ben Stokes along with his England team-mate Sam Curran and Australia all-rounder Cameron Green are some of the overseas players, who are expected to attract the biggest bids if they enter the auction this year.
Meanwhile, three teams – CSK, DC and LSG – bought only seven overseas players at the previous auction, so they could be on the lookout to fill up the last spot while other teams could release one or more of their overseas players to create vacancies and increase their purses.
A total of six franchises had brought in injury replacements — Adam Milne replaced by Matheesha Pathirana (CSK), Tymal Mills replaced by Tristan Stubbs (MI), Nathan Coulter-Nile replaced by Corbin Bosch (RR), Mark Wood replaced by Andrew Tye (LSG), Alex Hales replaced by Aaron Finch (KKR) and Jason Roy replaced by Rahmanullah Gurbaz (GT) during IPL 2022.
All these teams will now have to decide whether to retain the replacement player or the original player, or both provided the player limit allows.