The Indian Premier League chairman Arun Dhumal has confirmed that the IPL mega auction will happen before the next season of the cash-rich league. The announcement comes just over a week ahead of IPL 2024 is scheduled to commence. Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) are set to face Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the opening game of the season in Chennai.
The last IPL mega auction took place in 2022 when teams were allowed to retain maximum four players in the squad. Dhumal has hinted that something of similar sorts will happen in terms of retention rules ahead of next season. He also stated that the mega auction makes the tournament more interesting.
“We will have the mega auction for sure, where you get to choose three-four players and then you have a new team. That makes it more interesting and that format will continue. Hopefully, the mega auction will be as big and as good as we have had earlier given newer talents coming in from India and other countries. Teams like Afghanistan have also benefitted as they could showcase their talent,” the IPL Chairman added.
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Dhumal also opened up on the schedule of the upcoming season. BCCI has released the schedule only for first 21 matches till April 7 at the moment and depending on the election dates, the rest of the schedule will be finalised. Moreover, with the T20 World Cup set to commence on June 1, the IPL is set to end earlier on May 26.
“This time the challenge is that we are starting early with the T20 World Cup in the first week of June, and we were planning to close the tournament by May 25 or May 26 as the team will have to travel to the US and that’s a different territory altogether.
“For the first time, the tournament will be held there and it’s a new thing, so the players need to be there early to have some sort of practice games ahead of the tournament,” Dhumal further added.
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Coming back to the IPL mega auction, there were reports that the idea of revamping the squad after three years will be shelved going forward. Moreover, several franchises including Delhi Capitals co-owner Parth Jindal had reportedly expressed concerns over repeatedly forming the squad after every three IPL seasons.
In the mini-auction held ahead of IPL 2024, the 20-crore mark was breached first by Pat Cummins and then by his Australia teammate Mitchell Starc who was sold to the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for a massive amount of INR 24.75 crore. On the other hand, Pat Cummins went to Sunrisers Hyderabad for INR 20.5 crore and has been named the skipper of the team as well.
Few franchises will have to take tough decisions next year ahead of mega auctions with players like Rohit Sharma and others coming under the scanner for underperforming in IPL over last few years. Moreover, it will also be interesting to see if MS Dhoni retires from IPL after this season.
