The Indian Premier League [IPL] is a peculiar animal. Amidst the annual cycle of the gavel being banged at the podium for the auction, lies a phenomenon that leaves the IPL alone on an island, when compared to other sporting leagues that deploy a drafting or auctioning system as a component of the series.
This quirk is called Mega Auction, which interrupts the regular cycle, by popping into existence every three years. In this, teams get to keep a handful of their former players, while the rest go into the auction pool to be sold to the highest bidder. This feature was ideated as a way to keep the league competitive by giving every team a “fair” chance to rebuild after disappointing seasons while preventing certain teams from getting too dominant.
An instance of this idea working out can be grasped when looking at the makeup of the 2024 Mumbai Indians (MI) squad, which had five players that regularly featured in the Indian National Men’s Team 11. Four of them have now captained the national team. Will all of them play for the same franchise again? Probably not. However, this isn’t because some rule prevents them from doing so; MI can technically retain all four.
One might wonder as to the purpose of a mega auction then, as the rules don’t prevent a team from keeping all if not most of their marquee players. Even if they did, we’ve seen time and again that marquee players don’t necessarily win you the league anyway - Rajasthan Royals triumph in IPL’s first-ever season in 2008 as the rank underdogs is a testament to this claim.
Questionable tactical relevance notwithstanding, the Mega-Auction assumes a much different throne of significance when one takes a look at the bigger picture.
The IPL has grown into becoming something much larger than the average sports tournament, being valued at $3.4 billion – making it the richest cricket league by some distance, and the third most valuable amongst sporting leagues globally.
Broadly speaking, the league’s stakeholders include the players, the franchises, the broadcasters, the fans, and, of course, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). And, they would all be largely happy, as long as the league keeps growing and paying out more money. - which is exactly what the BCCI is focused on.
The retention policy for the IPL 2025 mega auction allows each team to retain up to 6 players: five capped and one uncapped. In protracted negotiations between teams and the board, some teams had asked for as many as 8 retentions, some were good with just 2 to 3, while a couple argued that the mega auction should be scrapped altogether.
Ultimately, they arrived at 6, which is a decent compromise that appeases most teams. The auction purse is set at 120 Crores (Cr.), rising by 20 Cr. over the previous year.
There's a curveball in play though, with valuations of the retention slots, which are set at - 18 Cr., 14 crores, 11 crores, and then 18 and 14 Cr. again. It was a surprising change compared to previous auctions, wherein all slots were in descending order of value, and the aggregate for the maximum retentions had never exceeded 50% of the total auction purse.
The Mega Auctions are a golden chance for the underpaid heroes of the past few seasons to finally claim a paycheque that matches their contributions. For someone like Rinku Singh, life could quickly skyrocket from his previous year’s 55 Lakhs contract valuation to now earning possibly well north of 10 Cr.
But it’s not so golden a moment for everyone, with franchises having to potentially deal with even more headaches than the usual dosage. They might need to shell out more than 75 Cr. to keep just 5 players but then be left with just 45 Cr. to buy at least 13 more players from the auction pool.
This dilemma is crucial in preventing franchises from just hoarding the top players - if every team retains 5 players, 50 of the top cricketers in the world will be out of the auction. Most of these might be Indian players, who are in high demand anyway because of their role in forming the majority of the playing 11, while the auction itself ends up being a dull spectacle without any stars on the selling block.
Moreover, there is an alternative in the form of RTMs (right-to-match cards), which allows franchises to match the highest auction bid to recruit one of their former players without partaking in the bidding process – all the more incentive for them to get star players into the auction pool.
In this manner, while the BCCI can say that they have listened to the franchises and given them what they wanted, they have cleverly ensured that like previous mega auctions, this one also promises to be a blockbuster event, entertaining the fans and driving massive revenues towards the broadcasters. The 2022 edition gained over 50 million views on the first day itself, so there's no telling where the 2025 edition’s numbers might end up.
Another important thing to mention in the context of viewership is the Impact Player rule. The introduction of it last year saw the most aggregate runs ever scored in an IPL season, as most teams could now boast a lineup with proper batters all the way to number 8, inevitably sparking a flurry of run-scoring, that brought along with it record-breaking viewership numbers.
A lot of debate has surrounded this rule, as it has proven to be a nightmare for the bowlers, with most ending the season at an economy of 10 or above. From a pure cricketing standpoint, the unfair advantage to batting sides should be a good enough reason to do away with the rule.
Moreover, having a 12th player diminishes the impact of all-rounders and inhibits their growth, a troubling development given the Indian national team's consistent dearth of all-rounder options.
Despite this, the BCCI has decided that the impact player rule stays. The primary focus, therefore, is not competitive cricket or the development of domestic players, but entertainment. Like Ashwin said on his YouTube channel, “The batters, like Virat, are the heroes. People come to see them score runs. We, the bowlers, have to prevent them from doing so. We are the villains.”
Recent news, however, has rained on BCCI’s make-the-mega-auction-really-entertaining parade. Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) have made three retentions public–Klaasen, skipper Cummins, and all-rounder Abhishek. If the previous retention slots seemed like a lot of money, SRH has taken it a step further and retained these three for 23, 18, and 14 crores respectively. That is 55 crores spent on three cricketers.
If more teams take inspiration from this, it could be a threat not just to the fans’ enjoyment and viewership, but also to the salary of most players. While these retentions benefit the top retained players, what happens to those who aren’t retained? The total purse will not change from 120 crores and teams will have to get a minimum of 18 players anyway, despite whoever they retain for however much. So, they will go into the auction with a miniscule budget for these players, most of whom will end up undervalued.
Thankfully for them, the IPL Governing Council announced, “A match fee has been introduced for the first time in the history of IPL. Each Playing member (Including the Impact Player) will get a match fee of INR 7.5 Lakhs per match. This will be in addition to his contracted amount.” With this, despite whatever they earn from the auction, a player can earn some salvation in the form of 1.05 crores by featuring in the playing 11 throughout the league.
Further observation of the retention rules will reveal even more intriguing points. One such example is that, unlike before, franchises have been given much more flexibility. SRH, whose success last year was largely due to their foreign contingent, asked if they could retain as many foreign players as they wanted (the prior limit was 2). Granted. Kolkata Knight Riders asked for the option of only RTMs instead of retentions. Granted. Chennai Super Kings asked that the old (pun intended) uncapped player rule–which classifies a player who hasn’t played for ICT in 5 years as uncapped–be revived. What Thala wants, Thala gets.
A team like Mumbai Indians is, perhaps, happy they finally got a chance to retain all their Indian stars (well, maybe not so much after the Hardik-Rohit fiasco). Teams like Punjab Kings and Delhi Capitals will be excited at the prospect of being able to enter the auction with over 100 crores and bidding for every single player. All in all, everyone (the fans, the franchises, the players, and the broadcasters) to a very reasonable extent, got what they wanted. Through this, the BCCI has guaranteed that the league will progress and generate heaps upon heaps of money. And who gets a huge part of this chunk? If you guessed the BCCI themselves, you guessed right.
Post-Retentions Announcement Analysis
Paddy: The retentions ahead of the 2025 IPL auction have thrown up a few surprises in terms of the players who have chosen to walk away from their teams. Though Mumbai Indians managed to hold onto a bulk of their core of established national team players, they have proved the exception rather than the rule. Multiple Indian stars who have been in and around the national setup have chosen to walk away from their previous franchises in search of a more favourable deal for themselves, be it in terms of captaincy, batting position, or general position to challenge for trophies. 4 out of the 11 who started the 2023 World Cup final (Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, and Mohammed Siraj), along with other established stars like Rishabh Pant, Arshdeep Singh, and Ishan Kishan will all go into the auction. While I’m expecting some of that to change with the usage of RTM cards (I’m predicting that a lot of bowlers will be RMT’d), it is interesting to see a small power struggle of sorts emerging between individual player power and team power.
Rajasthan Royals have generally been known to have slightly funky auction strategies, and their retentions this time are an indication that they could be cooking another one. They parted ways with their top run-scorer and top wicket-taker from their 2022 finals run in Jos Buttler and Yuzi Chahal, and used all six retentions, leaving them no RTMs. They also seem to have slightly overpaid for Riyan Parag and Dhruv Jurel at 14cr each. However, in keeping Samson, Jaiswal, Parag, Jurel, and Hetmeyer, they have secured 5 out of their top 6, and now need to buy just one batter and bowlers. In doing so, they have swerved the necessity to get involved in dogfights at the auction for batters, where the presence of players like Pant, Iyer, and Kishan are almost certain to lead to heavily overinflated prices. They are likely to have a free run at the bowlers they prioritize, and their strong Indian core means that they don’t need to worry about picking between Indian and overseas.
Speaking of bowlers, this retention cycle has shown a continuation of the trend of teams being risk-averse in their retention of bowlers. Jasprit Bumrah and Rashid Khan are the only bowlers to be retained in the top price bracket, and teams have generally opted to retain batters over bowlers. Of the 15 bowlers who have been retained, 7 are spinners. Given that there is a relative paucity of top-quality spinners, teams have opted to retain their banker spinners, and I expect that both Yuzi Chahal and Rahul Chahar will go for big money at the auction as other teams look for high-quality spinners in a relatively small field. It will also be curious to see what kind of money overseas spinners like Wanindu Hasaranga, Adam Zampa, and Adil Rashid go for, given that teams have tended to avoid overseas spinners in the past. In general, teams have been swayed by the fact that bowlers have just 24 balls to impact a match and the relatively higher fitness concerns that bowlers have.
One thing I suspect will happen at the auction is the retention of Indian bowlers via the RTM card. The likes of Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, Mukesh Kumar, and Harshal Patel will all be available in the auction but have significant links to the teams that they have been released from. It is possible that many of these teams feel they will be able to get their players back at a lower price point than they would have through direct retention.
Zohran: The most intriguing observation is that players are finally having a say in what they want and aren’t afraid to explore other options if negotiations with their previous team do not work out. It used to be very rare for a team to let go of their core players, let alone their captain, and even rarer to let go of a captain who has just led you to a successful campaign. Four captains from last season - Shreyas, Pant, KL, and Faf - will be a part of the auction pool. The first 3 among these are interesting ones because ideally, their teams would have chosen to retain them. But they did not fulfill their demands so the players chose to enter the auction, hoping to find a better deal than what they were offered. It is definitely risky, since one of them might end up in a team that already has a captain, or find themselves struggling to bat at a position of their liking. Let’s say if RCB buys one of these three. They may not get captaincy because Kohli has expressed his desire to captain again. Similarly, despite having expressed his desire to bat in the middle order, KL might find himself in a team that lacks openers and so he will have no option but to open.
I think communication between players/their agents and rival teams has played a very significant role in the retentions. Teams that desire a key player from another team have been promising them ridiculous amounts of money to lure them into the auction. This has only been possible because of the change in the RTM rules, which allows the team with the last bid on the player to raise their bid once more if the original team chooses to RTM. For example, if PBKS has the last bid on Rishabh Pant at 14 Cr and DC chooses to use an RTM, Punjab can now raise their bid to any figure that they want. So, teams have used this option to promise players bids upwards of 20 Crores. But the auction dynamics are such that this rule becomes a double-edged sword. Using the previous example again, if DC does not have enough funds to use an RTM on Pant, then he goes to PBKS for just 14 Cr since they don’t need to raise their bid anymore. But players are willing to take this risk anyway, which I think is good because at least they are making their own decisions. Approaching players of rival teams used to be frowned upon before, but I think after the Hardik Pandya trade last year, the social stigma has gone and now we will see most players being very active in negotiations and making decisions that might be a bit surprising to fans but will be in the best interest of the player.
Another trend I noticed was that most teams have retained an uncapped player, with some even choosing to keep two. This is because their fee is just 4 crores, the same as what it used to be 3 years ago. Retaining someone like Harshit Rana for just 4 Cr is a steal. It’s probably good that so many uncapped players have been retained - just shows how much talent we have in the country. It doesn’t seem like a big thing right now, but who knows what will happen in a few years. These players can be expected to feature regularly in playing 11s, which will only make them better and better for international cricket. After all, it is the IPL that gave us the likes of Bumrah and Hardik, who are perhaps the two most important players in India’s t20 setup.
As for the auction, I think the top 5 buys will all be Indian players. We have quite a few marquee Indians in the auction and all of them, especially those who are established captains, will be pursued hotly by multiple teams. I don’t see many teams breaking the bank for foreign players this time. Someone like Jos Buttler or Trent Boult will probably still get a salary upwards of 10 Crores, but other than the best of the best I see most foreign players going for base price or a comparatively low fee. This is simply because of supply and demand. Out of the 46 players retained, 36 are Indians. A lot of good foreign players are in the auction, with multiple options for each role. Only those foreigners who have rare skill sets have been retained, like Russell and Narine with their all-rounder skills or Pathirana with his death bowling. All in all, I would say most teams have been logical and managed to find creative ways to keep key players. The way most teams split their 75 crores amongst their 5 retentions has been very interesting to see.
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