It has just been 2 months since the IPL 2020 final on 10th November where Mumbai Indians clinched their 5th IPL title, and here we are already talking about the 14th edition of IPL.
The IPL 2021 will be as per regular schedule, i.e. it will start in March-April like all the previous years. Before the commencement of the tournament, they will be having a mini-auction for the 8 franchises.
It has now been officially declared that the IPL 2021 Player Auction will be held on 18th February in Chennai.
Here we take a look at SIX new rules that the 8 IPL franchises have to keep in mind during the mini-auction on 18th February:
1. Player purse
IPL Governing Council has capped the player purse of each franchise at INR 85 crores. All the 8 IPL franchises have already submitted the list of the retained players, which is the deciding factor of the remaining player purse going into the IPL 2021 mini-auction.
| Franchise | No of Players | No of Overseas Players | Total money spent (INR crores) | Salary cap available (INR crores) | Available Slots | Overseas Slots |
| CSK | 18 | 7 | 62.10 | 22.90 | 7 | 1 |
| DC | 19 | 6 | 72.0982 | 12.9018 | 6 | 2 |
| KXIP | 16 | 3 | 31.80 | 53.20 | 9 | 5 |
| KKR | 17 | 6 | 74.25 | 10.75 | 8 | 2 |
| MI | 18 | 4 | 69.65 | 15.35 | 7 | 4 |
| RR | 17 | 5 | 50.15 | 34.85 | 8 | 3 |
| RCB | 12 | 4 | 49.10 | 35.90 | 13 | 4 |
| SRH | 22 | 7 | 74.25 | 10.75 | 3 | 1 |
| Total | 139 | 42 | 483.39 | 196.60 | 61 | 22 |
2. No Right to Match card
The franchises will have no “Right to Match” card as this will be a mini-auction. The RTM card enables a franchise to match to retain its former player by matching the highest bid made for the player, but it is only made available during mega-auction.
3. Squad strength
Each IPL franchise must have a minimum of 18 players in their squad and the upper limit is set at 25 players.
4. Minimum Indian players
Each IPL franchise must have a minimum of 17 and a maximum of 25 Indian players in their squad, including both capped and uncapped players.
5. Maximum international players
Each IPL franchise can have a maximum of eight International players in their squad.
6. Minimum 75% of the player purse to be spent
In IPL, all the franchises were given INR 85 crores to build a team. Now they are directed by BCCI to spend a minimum of INR 63.75 crores on buying the players. If any team spend less than this amount, then BCCI will take the deficit as the penalty. No franchise will now be able to play MONEYBALL like strategy.
