The mega auction for the IPL 2018 auction is scheduled to be held in Bengaluru on January 27 and 28, the Press Trust of India reported on Tuesday (December 19). The dates for the auction coincide with the South Africa-India Test at the Wanderers in Johannesburg as well as the final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali domestic T20 tournament.
The dates for the two-day auction process were ratified at the IPL Governing Council meeting held in New Delhi on December 6. It was in that meeting that BCCI apprised the franchise representatives about the retention process.
The auction ahead of the 11th season of IPL will be a bigger affair than usual, given that each franchise can retain a maximum of five players from their existing rosters through a combination of pre-auction retention and Right To Match (RTM) cards. According to a report on ESPNCricinfo, teams have until January 4 to submit their retention lists while the BCCI itself will make public their full list of to-be-auctioned players on January 18.
Franchises will each begin with an auction purse of INR 80 crores to build a 25-member (max) squad. This increase in purse value (up from INR 66 crores in 2017) is a direct consequence of the increased revenue for the league through title rights sale.
Each team will have to spend at least 75 per cent of the salary cap (INR 60 crore) by the end of the two-day procedure. Retained players will have a more dynamic effect on the team’s salary purse depending on the number of players retained by the franchise.
. The dates for the auction coincide with the South Africa-India Test at the Wanderers in Johannesburg as well as the final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali domestic T20 tournament.){kind=link}