The recently retired South Africa great Jacques Kallis, sacked England batsman Kevin Pietersen and India discards Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh are among the 16 marquee players who will be the first set of players to be up for grabs in the IPL-7 auction to be held in Bangalore on February 12 and 13.
The final list of players has been trimmed to 514 from the original 895 names. The 514-strong list features 219 capped players (169 Indians and 50 overseas players) and 292 uncapped players (255 Indians and 37 overseas players).
Thirty players are listed at the maximum base price of Rs 2 crore, which includes 11 Indians. This is the first time uncapped players will feature in the auction. It will also be the first IPL Auction where the bidding will be done in Rupees.
The marquee players’ list has been split into two sets of eight names each. The first set includes Kallis, Pietersen, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Mahela Jayawardena, Mitchell Johnson, Murali Vijay and David Warner. Apart from Warner, whose base price is Rs 1.5 crore, the other seven are listed at the maximum base price.
The second set of marquee players includes George Bailey, Michael Hussey, Dinesh Karthik, Brendon McCullum and Amit Mishra (Rs 2 crore each), Faf du Plessis (Rs 1.5 crore), Zaheer Khan and Darren Sammy (Rs 1 crore each).
The other players listed at Rs 2 crore are Brad Hodge, Shaun Marsh, Ross Taylor, Manoj Tiwary, Robin Uthappa, Brad Haddin, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Angelo Mathews, Yusuf Pathan, Steven Smith, Praveen Kumar, Mitchell Starc, Pragyan Ojha, Alex Hales, Marlon Samuels, Brett Lee, Ashish Nehra and Samit Patel.
Apart from the two marquee groups, the other players have been split into categories according to their specialisation: batsman, fast bowler, spinner, all-rounder, wicketkeeper.
The franchises have stated they would like to have clarity on the venue where the tournament will be held before the auction takes place; but the IPL governing council has made it clear that the final call will be taken only after the elections dates are announced.
The IPL governing council has stipulated a salary cap of Rs 60 crore for the entire squad this season, which would increase by 5% per annum for 2015 and 2016. The governing council has also said that each squad must include no less than 16 and no more than 27 players, of which up to nine may be overseas players.
A rule modification for the IPL-7 auction is that each franchise will have a number of "rights to match" which it may exercise during the course of the auction for any players who were in its squad in 2013.
