IPL-4: 350 players go under hammer today

The ball is set to roll tomorrow, with 353 top cricketers from across the world going under the auctioneer’s hammer for the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL-4) in Bangalore’s plush ITC hotel.

The proceedings would be telecast live and exclusive on SET Max, the official broadcaster of IPL, between 10 am and 7 pm.

Ten franchises, including two new entrants (Kochi and Pune), would shell out around $75 million (Rs 335 crore) to get the desired players for their dream teams.

First off the block would be the 20 most expensive players, with a base price of $400,000 each: Adam Gilchrist, Brett Lee, Shaun Marsh from Australia, Daniel Vettori and Ross Taylor from New Zealand, Michael Yardy and Kevin Pietersen from England, Graeme Smith and A B De Villiers from South Africa and Chris Gayle and Brian Lara from the West Indies among others.

Team franchisees who went in a huddle for last-minute. The preparations before the auction starts tomorrow, said key players for the respective teams would be decided on day one.

Four Indian players who feature in this list are former captains Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, V V S Laxman and Yuvraj Singh. Most team managers, however, do not expect too many players to cross the $ 1 million (Rs 4.5 crore) price tag.

Yuvraj Singh, V V S Laxman, Yusuf Pathan and Gautam Gambhir are among the favourites in this year’s auction. If local newspapers are to be believed, S Sreesanth is the favored choice for the Kochi team.

Preity Zinta, who own the Punjab franchisee, has been tweeting for the last few days asking her followers to suggest names of players she could pick. She tweeted that contrary to media reports cricketers who played for the team have all been paid.

Sahara India has set up a 10-member team of top executives to plan out its auction startegy. Abhijit Sarkar, one of the directors in the team, said: “We are very excited and are looking forward for an interesting auction tomorrow.”

However, group chairman Subrato Roy and former Australian opener Geoff Robert Marsh, who has been appointed the coach, will be key in deciding the top spots. Most people are anticipating Sourav Ganguly to be picked for the Pune squad because of his close relationship with the Sahara group.

While five teams have retained 12 players for around $15 million or Rs 67 crore (each team was allowed to retain four players), the remaining three teams have preferred to go in for a new squad. Each franchise can spend up to $9 million (Rs 40 crore) in the auction that includes the amount for those who have been retained. The 12 players retained include Sachin Tendulkar (Mumbai Indians) and Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Chennai Super Kings).

This limit obviously will limit the options for teams like Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings, which have already spent half of their budget ($4.5 million/Rs 20 crore) to retain four players. Rajasthan Royals has forked out $3.1 million (Rs 13.9 crore) to retain two players, while Royal Challengers and Delhi Daredevils have dished out $1.8 million (Rs 8 crore) to retain one player each.