BCCI on Tuesday announced that a total of 1574 cricketers, including 1165 Indian players, have registered for the big auction to be held on November 24 and 25 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ahead of the Indian Premier League 2025. This list includes 320 capped (who have played international matches) players while 1,224 uncapped (who have not played international matches) players and 30 players from associate countries. Among the players playing international cricket, 48 are from India. Apart from this, 965 uncapped players of the country will also be part of the auction.
The registration process of players for the player auction for IPL 2025 officially closed on Monday. A total of 409 foreign players have registered for the auction. This is the second consecutive year that the auction is being held abroad. The last auction before IPL 2024 was held in Dubai. The auction will clash with the third and fourth day’s play of the first cricket Test between India and Australia starting on November 22 in Perth.
Each franchise will be able to field a team of maximum 25 players (including the respective retained players) and a total of 204 players can be purchased from the auction. Some big Indian stars like Rishabh Pant, Lokesh Rahul, Shreyas Iyer and Arshdeep Singh will also be included in this year’s auction.
South Africa has the second largest player pool in the auction with 91 players, followed by Australia with 76 players. 52 cricketers from England and 39 from New Zealand will take part in the auction while West Indies (33), Afghanistan (29) and Sri Lanka (29) are next in the list.
Among the associate countries, players from USA (10), Netherlands (12), Canada (4), Italy (1), UAE (1) and Scotland (2) will take part in the auction. The 10 franchises will collectively have around Rs 641.5 crore to spend on 204 players during the auction. Of these 204 places, 70 are earmarked for foreign players.
According to ESPNcricinfo, Ben Stokes’ name is missing among the players who have registered. Players like Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer are also included in this list, who have kept their base price at Rs 2 crore. Apart from this, R Ashwin and Yajuvendra Chahal have also kept their base price at Rs 2 crore. Mohammed Shami, who made his last appearance in the 2023 ODI World Cup final
Had played a competitive match, he has also kept his base price at Rs 2 crore.
Khaleel Ahmed, Deepak Chahar, Venkatesh Iyer, Avesh Khan, Ishan Kishan, Mukesh Kumar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Prasidh Krishna, T Natarajan, Devdutt Padikkal, Krunal Pandya, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj and Umesh Yadav. He is another player who has kept his base price at Rs 2 crore. Prithvi Shaw and Sarfaraz Khan, who were unsold in the last auction, have registered at the base price of Rs 75 lakh.
Mitchell Starc, who became the most expensive player in IPL history when he was bought by KKR for Rs 24.50 crore in 2024, is back in the auction pool at a base price of Rs 2 crore. Joffra Archer is also in the pool price of Rs 2 crore. He has not played in the IPL since 2023, when he appeared in only five matches for Mumbai Indians due to injury.