Captains Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, and Shreyas Iyer will be among the high-profile players entering the IPL 2025 mega auction. These three have not been retained by their franchises.
All ten teams had to submit their lists of retained players by October 31. The waiting game has increased for the future of many players with their respective franchises. This will make the mega auction quite exciting.
The Delhi Capitals have retained Axar Patel for Rs 16.50 crore, Kuldeep Yadav for Rs 13.25 crore, Tristan Stubbs for Rs 10 crore, and Abishek Porel for Rs 4 crore. This could be the end of nine years' association between the franchise and Pant, who joined in 2016. Under Delhi Capitals, Pant turned from a promise of a wicket-keeper-batter to match-winner and eventually, a leader. His local roots, having done his apprenticeship at the prestigious Sonnet Club in Delhi, gave an immense lift to the brand.
Pant and owners of the DC have discussed at length for the past few months over options under which he would stay at the franchise. There have been talks even the night before the deadline and a final attempt made on Thursday morning, which failed.
Now, Pant comes into the mega auction that is likely to fetch enormous bids for him. Social media guesses indicated that he could be the one who would fetch something like up to Rs 30 crore because many franchises are interested in a man who has led a previous team.
Other notable players of the Capitals released are: David Warner, Anrich Nortje, Prithvi Shaw, Khaleel Ahmed, Mukesh Kumar, IPL 2024 breakout star Jake Fraser-McGurk, Rasikh Dar.
Similarly, Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) has released KL Rahul. Earlier, IANS on October 17 had reported this development. With Rahul going into the mega auction, the end of a three-year journey for the franchise will mark its last lap with the cricketer, like Pant.
The management of LSG has retained Nicholas Pooran (Rs 21 crore), Ravi Bishnoi (Rs 11 crore), and Mayank Yadav (Rs 11 crore), whereas other uncapped players include Ayush Badoni (Rs 4 crore) and pacer Mohsin Khan (Rs 4 crore). The notable names that LSG let go include Quinton de Kock, Marcus Stoinis, Kyle Mayers, Krunal Pandya, and Deepak Hooda.
On the other hand, Iyer, who was released by KKR, marks the first instance of a title-winning captain from the last IPL season not being retained by his team. Other players released by KKR include Mitchell Starc, Phil Salt, Venkatesh Iyer, and Nitish Rana.
Iyer has been with KKR since 2022, but with the retention of key players such as Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Varun Chakaravarthy, Rinku Singh, Harshit Rana, and Ramandeep Singh, he heads back into the auction.
Other notable names that have been released include the five-time winners Chennai Super Kings, who have been unable to retain Devon Conway, Rachin Ravindra, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, and Tushar Deshpande. The champions of IPL 2022, Gujarat Titans, have released Mohammed Shami and David Miller.
The Rajasthan Royals team, which won in 2008, have freed Yuzvendra Chahal, Jos Buttler, Trent Boult, and Ravichandran Ashwin. Winners of the 2016 edition, Sunrisers Hyderabad, have freed the services of Washington Sundar, T. Natarajan, Mayank Agarwal, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
Punjab Kings have taken the whole overhaul route and released Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Sam Curran, Jonny Bairstow, and Liam Livingstone. The five-time champions Mumbai Indians released Ishan Kishan and Tim David while releasing Glenn Maxwell, Mohammed Siraj, Faf du Plessis, and Cameron Green by the Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
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