NEW DELHI: A whopping 1574 cricketers, including 1165 Indians, have signed up for the mega auction ahead of the Indian Premier League 2025 which will be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on November 24 and 25, the BCCI announced on Tuesday.
The list includes 320 capped players, 1,224 uncapped players and 30 players from the Associate Nations.
Among the capped players, 48 are from India. Moreover, 965 uncapped players of the country will also be part of the auction.
The player registration officially closed on Monday and a total of 409 overseas players will also go under the hammer.
This is the second successive year the auction is being held overseas as Dubai hosted the previous one ahead of the IPL 2024.
However, the auction will clash with the scheduled third and fourth day’s play of the first Test between India and Australia in Perth, which begins on November 22.
Each franchise will be able to form a maximum squad of 25 players (including respective retained players), and a total of 204 slots will be up for grabs from the auction.
This year’s auction will feature some high-profile India stars such as Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer and Arshdeep Singh.
South Africa have the second largest players’ pool in the auction with 91, followed by Australia with 76 players.
There are 52 cricketers from England and 39 from New Zealand while West Indies (33) and Afghanistan (29) and Sri Lanka (29) follow in the list.
The Associates make their presence felt through USA (10), Netherlands (12), Canada (4), Italy (1), UAE (1) and Scotland (2).
The 10 franchises will collectively have around Rs 641.5 crore to spend for the available 204 slots.
Out of those 204 slots, 70 are earmarked for overseas players.
As of now, 46 players have been retained by the 10 franchises with cumulative expenditure of Rs 558.5 crore.
Each franchise was allocated Rs 120 crore to build their squads but after the retention process, which was announced on October 31, Punjab Kings have the biggest purse — Rs 110.5 crore.
The Punjab outfit retained just two uncapped players — Shashank Singh and Prabhsimran Singh for Rs 9.5 crore.
Rajasthan Royals, under Sanju Samson, have the smallest purse of Rs 41 crore after retaining six players.
The Kolkata Knight Riders have also retained six players but they have a remaining purse of Rs 51 crore. (PTI)