The IPL 2025 auction, which will take place in Jeddah on November 24 and 25, will begin with the names of 12 high-profile players, including Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, and KL Rahul, the three leaders released by their teams prior to the retention deadline.
Seven of the auction’s top names are Indian athletes. Rahul, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohammed Shami, and Mohammed Siraj are in the second group of six elite players, while Iyer, Pant, and Arshdeep Singh are in the first. The five foreign players are South Africa’s power hitter David Miller, England’s white-ball captain Jos Buttler, South Africa’s quick Kagiso Rabada, Australia’s left-arm quick Mitchell Starc, who set a record for the highest-ever bid at an IPL auction prior to the 2024 season, and England’s all-rounder Liam Livingstone.
The auction committee left off two of the prominent players, England quicks Jofra Archer and Mark Wood, from the shortlist of 574 players. After a protracted injury layoff, Archer has just returned to duty. Ultimately, he played two seasons and participated in five games for Mumbai before they cut him. At the highest base price of INR 2 crore, Archer had placed his name on the auction longlist.
Wood missed that season due to an elbow injury, but the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) signed him in the 2022 auction.
In order to control his workload before the 2024 T20 World Cup, the ECB decided to exclude him from the 2024 season after he played four games for the team in 2023. In order to oversee Archer’s recuperation from his injury, the ECB also removed him from the IPL 2024 auction. The ECB has central contracts with both Archer and Wood.
However, James Anderson, England’s top wicket-taker who recently departed from Test cricket, is on the shortlist. After his international career ended, the 42-year-old fast bowler, who spent the latter half of his career specializing on red balls, indicated interest in joining the global franchise circuit. He last participated in a Twenty20 match in 2014. With a base price of INR 1.25 crore, he will be the oldest player at the auction and is looking to make his IPL debut.
The left-hand batter Vaibhav Suryavanshi, who is 13 years old and has already played five first-class matches for Bihar and two Youth Test matches for India Under-19s, is the youngest player at the auction. Last month, he scored a century against Australia Under-19s.
The Sri Lanka Under-19 fast bowler Dumindu Sewmina, who has only played one Twenty20 match but has drawn attention with his low, slingy movement and just won a position in the Lanka T10 league, is another youth who can draw attention during the auction. He will be trying to enter the IPL like fellow Lasith Malinga clones Nuwan Thushara and Matheesha Pathirana.
The organizers have divided the marquee list in half for the first time since the 2018 auction. There were 16 well-known players in the two sets back then. The final mega auction in 2022 began with a single batch of ten notable players.
Delhi Capitals (DC) will have two RTMs available, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) three, and Punjab Kings (PBKS) four. Each of the Mumbai Indians (MI), Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Gujarat Titans (GT), and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) will only have one RTM.
Through the RTM option, clubs will be able to match the highest price for players they released and purchase them back. (You may read more about the auction regulations here.)
366 Indian players and 208 foreign players make up the auction’s 574 total players. Three are from associate teams: Brandon McMullen (Scotland), Ali Khan, and Unmukt Chand, the former captain of India Under-19 (USA). 318 Indian players and 12 foreign players make up the 330 uncapped players.
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