IPL Auction 2018: Date, time, player list, rules and format

The 2018 VIVO IPL auction is around the corner and the franchises would have figured out on what their team needs ahead of the event. A total of 578 players including 360 Indians and 218 overseas players will go under the hammer in the auction. As many as 198 cricketers can be picked by all the eight teams in the auction.

The franchisees have been allotted a purse of 80 crores INR for the auction. The money spent by them in retaining the players will come under the total purse and the franchisees can use the remaining money in the auction. Each team can have a maximum of 25 players out of which 8 can be overseas professionals.

IPL auction 2018 date: 27 and 28 January 2018 (Saturday and Sunday)

IPL auction 2018 venue: Ritz-Carlton, Bengaluru

IPL auction 2018 time: 9 AM IST

IPL auction 2018 telecast: Star Network and Hotstar (You can also follow the live commentary of Sportskeeda’s IPL Live blog.)

Rules and guidelines

- The players available for auctions will be sorted into groups based on their role and split into pots.

- The auctioneer will announce the player’s name and teams will start bidding for the player starting from the base price. The representatives of the teams will have to raise their team paddle for the bid. The team with the highest bid will get the player.

- The bidding will continue till all the other teams back out and the auctioneer calls the player sold.

- If the sold player is eligible for RTM, the auctioneer will enquire the team for which he played for in the previous season and if the team is willing to use their RTM card for that player, the auctioneer will sell the player to them for the same price he got in the auction.

- A player will go unsold if none of the teams raise their paddle.

- The unsold players will come back into the auction after all the players go under the hammer for the first time. The auctioneer will give the teams an option of listing the unsold players they are interested in and will start the bidding war for those players for the second time with the base price of the player slashed to half.

Players retained by every team

Most of the teams retained their core

Earlier this month, all the eight teams revealed the players they are going to retain ahead of the IPL auction. As per the governing council's decision, a franchise can retain five players using one of the two combinations - three pre-auction retentions and two RTMs or two pre-auction retentions and three RTMs.

Some teams chose to retain three players while some decided to retain two and one each. Here is the list of the players who were retained in the player auction.

Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja.

Delhi Daredevils: Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant and Chris Morris.

Kings XI Punjab: Axar Patel.

Kolkata Knight Riders: Andre Russell and Sunil Narine.

Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah.

Rajasthan Royals: Steve Smith.

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers and Sarfaraz Khan.

Sunrisers Hyderabad: David Warner and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

The players eligible for RTM cards

He is one of the players to watch out for when it comes to the RTM cards

The IPL Governing Council introduced the RTM concept for the 2018 auction so that the franchise can retain the players they wanted. The usage of RTM depends on the number of pre-auction retentions a franchise has made.

The franchisees that have retained three players before the auction can use a maximum of two RTMs while the franchisees that have retained less than three players, can use their RTMs for a maximum of three players.

But, what does RTM mean?

RTM, which stands for Right to Match, can be availed by any team on the day of the auction. If a player (X), who played for team (Y) in the previous season, is acquired by another team (Z) in the auction, Y can use their RTM card and get X for the same amount of money for which Z bought him.

Players eligible for RTM cards

Chennai Super Kings: Baba Aparajith, Dwayne Bravo, Faf du Plessis, Ishwar Pandey, Brendon McCullum, Ronit More, Dwayne Smith and Andrew Tye.

Delhi Daredevils: JP Duminy, Mohammed Shami, Quinton de Kock, Shahbaz Nadeem, Jayant Yadav, Amit Mishra, Zaheer Khan, Sam Billings, Sanju Samson, Carlos Brathwaite, Karun Nair, CV Milind, Syed Ahmed, Pratyush Singh, Angelo Mathews, Corey Anderson, Kagiso Rabada, Pat Cummins, Ankit Bawne, Aditya Tare, Murugan Ashwin, Navdeep Saini and Shashank Singh.

Kings XI Punjab: Manan Vohra, Gurkeerat Mann Singh, Anureet Singh, Sandeep Sharma, Shardul Thakur, Wriddhiman Saha, Murali Vijay, NS Naik, Mohit Sharma, KC Cariappa, Armaan Jaffer, Pradeep Sahu, Swapnil Singh. Hashim Amla, Marcus Stoinis, Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, David Miller, Eoin Morgan, Rahul Tewatia, T Natarajan, Matt Henry, Varun Aaron, Martin Guptill, Darren Sammy and Rinku Singh.

Kolkata Knight Riders: Gautam Gambhir, Kuldeep Yadav, Manish Pandey, Suryakumar Yadav, Piyush Chawla, Robin Uthappa, Umesh Yadav, Yusuf Pathan, Sheldon Jackson (WK), Ankit Rajpoot, Rishi Dhawan, Sayan Ghosh, R Sanjay Yadav and Ishank Jaggi.

Mumbai Indians: Shreyas Gopal, Nitish Rana, Siddhesh Lad, J Suchith, Krunal Pandya, Deepak Punia, Jitesh Sharma, Tim Southee, Jos Buttler, Mitchell McClenaghan, Lendl Simmons, Kieron Pollard, Lasith Malinga, Mitchell Johnson, K Gowtham, Kulwant Khejroliya, Asela Gunaratne and Nicholas Pooran.

Rajasthan Royals: Ankit Sharma, Rajat Bhatia, James Faulkner, Dhawal Kulkarni, Vikramjeet Malik, Abhishek Nayar, Ajinkya Rahane, Dinesh Salunkhe, Pravin Tambe, Dishant Yagnik, Sagar Trivedi, Rahul Tewatia and Juan Theron.

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Chris Gayle, Yuzvendra Chahal, Harshal Patel, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Sreenath Aravind, Kedar Jadhav, Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, Samuel Badree, Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Iqbal Abdulla, KL Rahul, Avesh Khan, Tabraiz Shamsi, Tymal Mills, Billy Stanlake, Pawan Negi, Praveen Dubey and Aniket Chaudhary.

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Shikhar Dhawan, Moises Henriques, Naman Ojha, Ricky Bhui, Kane Williamson, Siddharth Kaul, Bipul Sharma, Ashish Nehra, Yuvraj Singh, Ben Cutting, Abhimanyu Mithun, Barinder Sran, Deepak Hooda, Vijay Shankar, Rashid Khan, Mohammed Siraj, Eklavya Dwivedi, Chris Jordan, Mohammad Nabi, Ben Laughlin, Pravin Tambe and Tanmay Agarwal.

Players who are up for grabs

Costliest buy yet again?

Last week, it was announced that as many as 1122 players have registered themselves for the mega player auction with 36 players (13 Indian and 23 overseas) listing their base price at INR 2 crore, which is the maximum base price limit.

It has been confirmed that a pool of 578 players including 360 Indians will be a part of the IPL auction ahead of the 2018 season.

Australia have the most number of players in the auction with 54 and are closely followed by South Africa with 42. New Zealand and England have 24 representatives in the auction while West Indies and Sri Lanka have 34 and 18 respectively.

Apart from these countries, players from Afghanistan (10), Bangladesh (6), Zimbabwe (4) and Ireland (1) have registered for the auction.

You can view and download the 2018 IPL auction players list here.

Auction purse

Kings XI Punjab have the highest purse going into the auction

Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals have the highest purse going into the auction as both the teams retained just one player before the auction and go to Bangalore with 67.5 crores INR to spend in the auctions while Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders come in the second place with 59 crores INR.

All the teams have retained their core and will hope to grab their targets before they run out of money. This is how the franchises go into the 2017 auctions.

Chennai Super Kings: Rs. 47 crore

Delhi Daredevils: Rs. 47 crore

Kings XI Punjab: Rs. 67.5 crore

Kolkata Knight Riders: Rs. 59 crore

Mumbai Indians: Rs. 47 crore

Rajasthan Royals: Rs. 67.5 crore

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Rs. 49 crore

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Rs. 59 crore