File photo of Rishabh Pant
The popularity of the Indian Premier League (IPL) can be summed up with the extravagant number of players who have registered themselves for the mega auction. A mind-boggling 1574 cricketers, including 1165 Indians, have signed up for the mega auction ahead of the Indian Premier League 2025 which will be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on November 24 and 25, the BCCI announced on Tuesday. Of these, a total of 25 players have registered themselves at the base price of INR 2 crore. Of these some of the players are expected to even cross the 20 crore mark when their names come up in the auction.
The list includes 320 capped players, 1,224 uncapped players and 30 players from the Associate Nations. Here's a look at the players in the INR 2 crore category:
Players in INR 2 crore category: Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Ravichandran Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohammed Shami, Khaleel Ahmed, Deepak Chahar, Venkatesh Iyer, Avesh Khan, Ishan Kishan, Mukesh Kumar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Prasidh Krishna, T Natarajan, Devdutt Padikkal, Krunal Pandya, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Mitchell Starc, Jofra Archer
Among the capped players, 48 are from India. Moreover, 965 uncapped players of the country will also be part of the auction.
The player registration officially closed on Monday and a total of 409 overseas players will also go under the hammer.
This is the second successive year the auction is being held overseas as Dubai hosted the previous one ahead of the IPL 2024.
However, the auction will clash with the scheduled third and fourth day's play of the first Test between India and Australia in Perth, which begins on November 22.
Each franchise will be able to form a maximum squad of 25 players (including respective retained players), and a total of 204 slots will be up for grabs from the auction.
South Africa have the second largest players' pool in the auction with 91, followed by Australia with 76 players.
There are 52 cricketers from England and 39 from New Zealand while West Indies (33) and Afghanistan (29) and Sri Lanka (29) follow in the list.
The Associates make their presence felt through USA (10), Netherlands (12), Canada (4), Italy (1), UAE (1) and Scotland (2).
The 10 franchises will collectively have around Rs 641.5 crore to spend for the available 204 slots.
With PTI Inputs
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