IPL Auctions – Explained

The Indian Premier League (IPL) auction is an annual event where the IPL franchises stakeholders convene under one roof to bid for players to build their team. Apart from being an event that involves a lot of strategy, each IPL auction creates its own spectacle and frenzy.

To sum it up, the IPL auctions are as popular as the IPL cricketing itself. But how does the auction take place and here is an overview.

Pre-Auction Preparations

Before coming into the auction, each franchise will have their own preparations on which players to bid. They all have their own scouting and analyst team to figure which players will be suitable for their team.

This depends on their team combination as well as the personnel they have in the existing squad.

Retentions

Just before the auctions, there is a window provided for the IPL teams to retain players from previous seasons. The franchises most often retain players who proved their worth last season. The number depends on whether it is a mini or major auctions.

In case of mini auction, there is no tab on player retentions, and the franchises are allowed to retain maximum of 4 players if there is a major auction taking place.

Player Pool

Those players who aren’t retained by their respective former teams or players who haven’t featured in IPL yet can all enter their auction pool. These includes both domestic and international players form various nations.

Budget

Each and every franchises will be alloted a cap going into the auctions depending on how they have fared in the retention activity. For instance if a team has retained most of its players will have less to spend at the auctions than a franchise that has released quite a lot of their highly paid players from the previous edition.

With these budget constraints, a franchise will enter the auction and this changes their auction strategy as well.

At present, each franchise will be given a maximum spend amount of 100 crores ahead of the auction.

Auction Mechanism

As mentioned IPL auctions are as entertaining as the cricketing action itself. This is a live event that takes place in the presence of an auctioneer.

This auctioneer starts by introducing a player from the segregated pool and the bidding process begins. Franchise representatives take turns to bid on the player until only one team remain in contention. And this player will be sold to that franchise for the final bid price.

There are categories in which the players come up at the auction pool.

While they will be divided based on their main trade, that is batting, bowling or all-rounder, it is further branched on the basis whether they are capped or uncapped at the international level. Capped means a player has represented his/her national team in games that have international status.

Usually the capped players category shows up early in the auction piece.

Bidding Wars

It is not unusual to see bidding wars at the auction table among teams both for reputed as well as up and coming players.

These wars go back to the strategy planned by the franchises before coming into the auction. So when more teams are interested in a player, it creates a bidding war.