PTI
MUMBAI, February 20: A total of 78 players, both Indian and foreigners, will go under the hammer here on Wednesday as cricket enters uncharted waters in an important phase of the multi-million dollar DLF Indian Premier League.
It will be for the first-ever time that international cricketers from around the world will be up for grabs by the eight city-specific franchises who have bought teams by paying a total of $723.3 million to the BCCI-floated IPL for taking part in the April 18-June 1 Twenty20 League.
The franchise owners - ranging from top industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya to Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta - will bid for several top names in international cricket.
The auction will be a private one to be conducted by an independent professional auctioneer Richard Madley who will be the sole arbiter to all aspects of the auction, the IPL said in a statement ahead of the pioneering effort.
Five iconic players of India - Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag - are not part of the bid process as they have to play for their respective city franchises - Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mohali and Delhi.
Commenting on the player auction guidelines, IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi said, "The player auction rule is our attempt to make tomorrow's auction a huge success. The Governing Council of the DLF Indian Premier League is pulling out all stops to ensure a free, transparent and fair bidding process for a truly historic first ever auction of cricketers in India".
Included among the global cricket super stars on sale are Australian captain Ricky Ponting, highest Test wicket taker Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka and controversial Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar.
Also among the list of players are retired Australian greats Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath and South Africa's Shaun Pollock, apart from retiring Australian Adam Gilchrist.
Each player has an annual base player fee. This base player fee assumes that the player is available for the entire season of the IPL season including, if applicable, the Champions League (expected to happen in October).
This fee will be adjusted on a pro-rata basis, depending on the availability of players in the first year.
The IPL Governing Council has decided that not more than $5 million and not less than $3.3 million can be bid for each lot of international players by each franchise, to ensure a level playing field in the tournament.
Each franchise would have to buy sixteen players at the minimum, out of which four should be from India and under the age of 22 and four other local players hailing from catchment areas earmarked by the IPL for each of the eight franchises.
Among the icon players, Tendulkar will be part of the Mumbai franchise owned by Ambhani's REL, Dravid will play for the Bangalore franchise owned by Vijay Mallya's UB Group, Ganguly for Kolkata owned by Shah Rukh's Red Chillies Entertainment, Yuvraj for Mohali owned by Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, R Burman and Group and Sehwag will lead the Delhi team, owned by GMR Holdings.
The other three franchise owners are Deccan Chronicle Group (Hyderabad), India Cements (Chennai), Delhi (GRM Group) and Emerging Media Group (Jaipur).
The player fees of any icon player - being 115 per cent of the highest player fee in that franchise's squad - will count towards the upper limit.
The cap placed on bids for a pool of international players by each franchise does not include the local (apart from the iconic player) and under 22 players whose minimum salary has been fixed as $20,000.
For the Ranji and other auction players the base price has been fixed as $50,000 per year.
The contract with the player will be for a fixed term of three years.
Each franchise can have a maximum of two centrally contracted Australian players in its squad and/or a maxiumum of two Australian players from each state association in its squad, as per the agreement arrived at between Cricket Australia and IPL.