In the next season of IPL, the fans will witness the return of banned franchises, Rajasthan Royals, and Chennai Super Kings. As in IPL 2017, the T20 league has completed it’s 10 years it has been expected that there will be a grand auction in 2018 and all eh players will be going under the hammer.
However, considerations are widespread whether all players will be included in the auction or the retention policy will be implemented. IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla recently stated that nothing is finalized yet, as there is a lot of time left before the next year auctions. However, he acknowledged one thing that the temporary franchises, Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions will be terminated in IPL 2018 and CSK and RR will sy=urey be making their comeback.
Talking about the matter, Kings XI Punjab’s co-owner, Preity Zinta shared her views, she said, “It was meant to be an open auction without retention. We have been told about it. I will welcome it if BCCI decides to go for an open auction. It doesn’t mean that I am not happy with my team. I think we have a great team. The teams which are doing well are the ones where the young Indian players are performing.”
If an open auction takes place, the fans will be able to see the creation of many new team pairings. For example, in a hypothetical situation, Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina might play for CSK and Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard might play for RR. There are some endless possibilities, but one thing is for sure that it will give some freshness to the IPL.
Things have been quite boring as some players like Kohli and Harbhajan have played for the same franchise over the decade. The only point of discussion is the player holding policy and the right to match options.
Teams like Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians are supporting the retention policy, while some other franchises want the ‘right to match’ options available to them in the open auctions.
The ‘right to match’ will allow the franchise owners to retain their players by matching their listed auction price in the auction. The auctions will also see the return of CSK and RR and it seems that CSK badly wants the return of the players like Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni. But some other franchises wants that each and every player should go under the hammer and they can build teams from the scratch.
