Starc, Archer, Gayle and Stokes to skip IPL 2022

Mitchell Starc, Sam Curran, Ben Stokes, Joe Root, Chris Gayle and Jofra Archer are some of the big names who have decided to skip this year's Indian Premier League, the BCCI confirmed on Saturday (January 22).

Meanwhile, David Warner, Mitchell Marsh, R Ashwin, Shreyas Iyer, Ishan Kishan, Devdutt Padikkal, Harshal Patel, Steven Smith, Shakib al Hasan, Faf du Plessis, Quinton de Kock, Odean Smith, Kagiso Rabada and Dwayne Bravo are among the 49 players that have listed their base price at the maximum of INR 2 crore for the upcoming mega auction, which will be held on February 12 and 13.

Overall, a total of 1214 cricketers (270 capped players, 903 uncapped and 41 from Associate countries) have registered themselves for the auction. There are players from countries like Nepal, UAE, USA, Oman, Scotland and Netherlands. Of course, this list will be trimmed a couple of days prior to the auction.

An unnamed player from Bhutan has registered for the lucrative league while a record number of 14 cricketers from USA have signed up for the auction.

There are a total of 896 Indian players, while 318 are from other nations. Meanwhile, 17 Indians and 32 overseas players have listed their base price at the maximum of INR 2 crore.

Players like Padikkal, Harshal and Odean Smith too have kept their base price as INR 2 crore. At the same time, Tamil Nadu's big-hitter Shahrukh Khan and Madhya Pradesh's paceman Avesh Khan have put their base price at the minimum of INR 20 lakh.

With two new franchises - Lucknow and Ahmedabad - joining in, this will be the first mega auction since 2018. Ahmedabad have already drafted Hardik Pandya, Rashid Khan and Shubman Gill, while Lucknow got KL Rahul, Marcus Stoinis and Ravi Bishnoi.

A total of 33 players have been retained/drafted ahead of the auction. Every franchise can pick maximum of 25 players, and Punjab Kings (72 crore), Sunrisers Hyderabad (68 crore) and Rajasthan Royals (62 crore) will go into the auction with the most amount of money. If every franchise were to have the maximum of 25 players in their squad, 217 players will be taken in the auction (of which up to 70 may be overseas players).

Top-three brackets

INR 2 crore

Indian players: R Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Deepak Chahar, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Shami, Devdutt Padikkal, Krunal Pandya, Harshal Patel, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Shardul Thakur, Robin Uthappa, Umesh Yadav, Dinesh Karthik, Ishan Kishan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

Overseas players: Mujeeb Zadran, Ashton Agar, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Marsh, Steve Smith, Matthew Wade, David Warner, Adam Zampa, Shakib Al Hasan, Mustafizur Rahman, Sam Billings, Saqib Mahmood, Chris Jordan, Craig Overton, Adil Rashid, Jason Roy, James Vince, David Willey, Mark Wood, Trent Boult, Lockie Ferguson, Quinton de Kock, Marchant de Lange, Faf du Plessis, Kagiso Rabada, Imran Tahir, Fabian Allen, Dwayne Bravo, Evin Lewis, Odean Smith.

INR 1.5 crore

Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma, Washington Sundar, Aaron Finch, Chris Lynn, Nathan Lyon, Kane Richardson, Jonny Bairstow, Alex Hales, Eoin Morgan, Dawid Malan, Adam Milne, Colin Munro, Jimmy Neesham, Glenn Phillips, Tim Southee, Colin Ingram, Shimron Hetmyer, Jason Holder, Nicholas Pooran.

INR 1 crore

Piyush Chawla, Kedar Jadhav, Prasidh Krishna, T Natarajan, Manish Pandey, Ajinkya Rahane, Nitish Rana, Wriddhiman Saha, Kuldeep Yadav, Jayant Yadav, Mohammad Nabi, James Faulkner, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, Riley Meredith, Josh Philippe, D'arcy Short, Andrew Tye, Dan Lawrence, Liam Livingstone, Tymal Mills, Ollie Pope, Devon Conway, Colin de Grandhomme, Mitchell Santner, Aiden Markram, Rilee Rossouw, Tabraiz Shamsi, Rassie van der Dussen, Wanindu Hasaranga, Roston Chase, Sherfane Rutherford.