IPL auction: Would Stokes steal the show?

IPL auction pool was announced on Saturday with 578 players featuring in the pool.

Eight slabs

1122 players have registered for auctions, but BCCI has pruned the list and have made eight different slabs based on the expertise of the players.

16 Marquee players

England all-rounder Ben Stokes, Indian off-spinner R Ashwin,  Mitchell Starc, Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Shikhar Dhawan and Glenn Maxwell are part of  two sets of top-players who are expected to dominate the IPL auction.

The list also includes Ajinkya Rahane, Harbhajan Singh, Joe Root, Shakib Al Hasan, Faf du Plessis, Dwayne Bravo and Kane Williamson.

High Stakes on Ben Stokes

Ben Stokes was cleared to play for England again on Wednesday despite being charged with affray and he would contend for auctions as well.

The advisory body has announced that a team buying the England all-rounder can hire his replacement in case he remains unavailable for the entire tournament.

Ben Stokes was bought for colossal 14.5 crore in 2017 by Rising Pune Supergiants and he performed exceptionally well as their team made it to the finals. Stokes had scored 316 runs in 12 matches including a century, he also bagged 12 wickets.

Sehwag’s believes Stokes can fetch more than Kohli

Sehwag said in an interview that the rules of IPL have transformed with time and with teams willing to empty their purse, Ben Stokes can prove to be more expensive than Virat Kohli .

“Yes , there are 2-3 players who can fetch more. When a team wants a specific player in an auction, a bid that starts for Rs. 2 crores cross the mark of even Rs. 20 crores,” Sehwag told Sportskeeda during a commercial shoot for IPL.

The complete breakdown of the players who are all set to go under the radar of eight franchise are as follows: