By IANS
Mumbai : A total of 78 players, including Indians and foreigners, will be auctioned for the eight DLF Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises, starting here at 11 a.m. Wednesday, the IPL council announced here Tuesday.
The auction, to be done by Briton Richard Madley at Hilton Oberoi, will be an open one with each player being individually put up for bidding. The highest bid that is accepted by the auctioneer shall be the buyer at that price.
Each player will have an annual ‘base player fee’ from where the bidding for him will start. The base player fee assumes that the player would be available for the entire IPL season including, if applicable, the Champions Twenty20 international tournament.
This fee will be adjusted on a pro-rata basis, depending on the player’s availability for the IPL season in the first year, said IPL in a statement.
Each franchise will have a minimum purse of $3.3 million and maximum of up to $5 million.
Players will be arranged into sets of approximately 12 according to their base player fee, their cricketing speciality and their expected availability for this season.
If a player who on the day of the auction is expected to be unavailable in 2008 but subsequently becomes available — through retirement, non-selection by national team or tour cancellation – could become part of the relevant franchise’s squad for that season. The concerned player will, however, have to obtain a no objection certificate (NOC) from his home board to be eligible to play.
Ahead of the auction, franchises will be given a list of the players to be auctioned, the composition of the sets of players and the order in which these sets will be auctioned.
For each player, the following information will be included: name, nationality, speciality, base fee, and expected ‘percentage availability’ for the 2008 season.
“The minimum ‘percentage availability’ for any player included in the auction will be 25 percent. Thus even if a player is expected to be either completely unavailable or only available for less than four IPL matches in 2008, 25 percent of the player fee bid for that player in the auction will count against the $5m purse,” said the statement.
“For example, the purchase for $400,000 of a player, who is expected to be completely unavailable in 2008, will cause a deduction of $100,000 from the franchise’s overall $5m purse.”
Within the sets, the order that players will be presented for auction will be determined by a random draw. Each player will be the subject of an open auction with the auctioneer in control. Bidders will raise a paddle to indicate a bid — only one official bidder per franchise.
Each bid will represent the player fee per season to be paid by the franchise to the player for each of the seasons 2008, 2009 and 2010, ignoring any periods of unavailability. Once made, no bid may be withdrawn.
Bidding increments will be as follows:
* bids up to $100,000 – increments of $5,000
* bids from $100,000 to $250,000 – increments of $10,000
* bids from $250,000 to $500,000 – increments of $25,000
* bids in excess of $500,000 – increments at the auctioneer’s discretion
The player fee will be deemed to include any fee that may be payable to the player’s agent.
Following the conclusion of each set, there will be a break to allow franchises time to re-evaluate their tactics.
Players for whom no bids will be received when they are initially presented for auction will be placed in a final set and will be re-presented for auction once all of the initial sets have been concluded. Franchises may not buy foreign players in advance of the auction, whether such players are amongst the list of players to be auctioned or otherwise.
After the auction, franchises will be free to purchase additional foreign players subject to the franchises informing the BCCI/IPL of any such additional foreign players. The BCCI/IPL will approach the desired players on behalf of the franchise in an attempt to negotiate the contracted fee up to an amount set by the franchise, and will endeavour to obtain a NOC from that player’s home board.
If more than one franchise is interested in a particular player, the IPL may hold a further auction to determine which franchise will sign that player. The fees paid to any such additional foreign players for 2008 (when added to the total player fees for 2008 committed by the franchise in the auction) must not exceed the maximum purse of $5m.
Indian players who are not in the Auction can be signed at any time.
The player fees of any icon players — at the date of publication of these rules they are Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh — being 115 percent of the highest player fee in that franchise’s squad, will count towards the maximum purse of $5 million.
The contract with the player will be for a fixed term of three years.