James Anderson leads IPL 2025 auction list, Ben Stokes missing

Ben Stokes. Pic/AFP

The IPL 2025 mega auction, scheduled for November 24 and 25 in Jeddah, will see 41-year-old James Anderson, who announced his retirement from international cricket earlier this year, make an unexpected bid for a spot in the lucrative T20 league.

Anderson, who is currently serving as England's bowling coach, has taken many by surprise with this decision, marking a dramatic shift from his role as a player-coach. Meanwhile, Ben Stokes is notably absent from the 1574 players registered for the mega auction list. The feisty all-rounder opted out of IPL 2024 to manage his workload and fitness and suffered a hamstring injury during the hundred in August, which led him to be sidelined for two months.

The extensive list of registered players, which will be trimmed after input from the franchises, includes all the marquee Indian players not retained by their teams. Among them, former captains Rishabh Pant (Delhi Capitals), KL Rahul (Lucknow Super Giants), and Shreyas Iyer (Kolkata Knight Riders) are listed with a base price of Rs 2 crore. Joining them are R Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal, both released by Rajasthan Royals, and Mohammed Shami, who hasn't played since the 2023 ODI World Cup final due to injuries.

Other Indian players at the maximum base price of Rs 2 crore include 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, and Umesh Yadav.

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Prithvi Shaw and Sarfaraz Khan, unsold in the last auction, have registered at a base price of Rs 75 lakh.

Mitchell Starc, the most expensive player in IPL history after being bought for Rs 24.50 crore by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in 2024, returns to the auction pool at a base price of Rs 2 crore. Jofra Archer, having played only five games for Mumbai Indians (MI) in 2023 due to injuries, is also listed at the same base price. The list also features an unusual entrant, Italy's Thomas Draca, who played in the Global T20 Canada and was recently picked by MI Emirates for the ILT20 in the UAE.

Franchises can build squads of up to 25 players, with 204 slots available at the auction after retaining 46 players across the ten teams. Each team has a total purse of Rs 120 crore, with Punjab Kings (PBKS) having the largest remaining purse (Rs 110.5 crore), followed by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) (Rs 83 crore) and Delhi Capitals (DC) (Rs 73 crore).

Teams were allowed to retain up to six players, with a maximum of five capped and two uncapped players. These players can be retained outright, bought back using Right-to-Match (RTM) options, or a combination of both. If a player is bought by another franchise, his previous team can match the highest bid using the RTM option, after which the winning bid can be raised, requiring the original team to match the increased bid to retain the player.

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Punjab Kings, having retained just two players, have the most RTM options (four) at the auction. RCB, with three retained players, have three RTM options, while Delhi Capitals, with four retained players, have two. Five teams--MI, Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Gujarat Titans (GT), Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG)--retained five players each and have one RTM option. Rajasthan Royals (RR) and KKR, having retained six players, have no RTM options.

Franchises can still buy back as many players as they wish during regular bidding if they place the highest bids.

(With agency inputs)