Kesrick Williams, Mushfiqur Rahim Among 24 New Players Requested By Franchise For IPL Auction
The original list of 971 players who threw their hats in the ring for the upcoming auction of IPL 2020 has been trimmed down to 332. On Wednesday, the IPL governing council sent the eight franchises the final list of players. The much-awaited auction for the next edition of the IPL will take on 19th of this month in Kolkata.
A total of 73 slots are available for the eight teams to fill up, 29 of which could be overseas players. Most of the franchises would be aiming to plug some gaps and looking out for back-up for key slots. On the other hand, the likes of Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kings XI Punjab look set to have a busy auction as they have released a number of players.
New names in the list:
Meanwhile, the list of 332 players finalised to go under the hammer also have names of 24 additional players who were initially not a part of the 971-player list. These players were added to the list after their names were requested by the franchises, according to ESPNCricinfo.
Bangladesh star Mushfiqur Rahim, West Indies pacer Kesrick Williams, senior Australian journeyman Dan Christian, legspinner Adam Zampa, 21-year-old Surrey batsman Will Jacks are some of the players among those 24 names. Mushfiqur had recently made himself unavailable for the auction but would now go under the hammer.
The likes of Christian and Zampa, on the other hand, have previously played in IPL and made their mark. Williams recently impressed against India although he made it to the news more because of being at the receiving end of Virat Kohli’s assault. Jacks is also going to fetch some big bids after scoring a 25-ball century in a pre-season T10 match against Lancashire in the UAE.
Meanwhile, the players have been grouped as per their specialty. The auction will take place in the order of – batsmen, allrounders, wicketkeeper-batsmen, fast bowlers and spinners. The auction will commence with different sets of capped players followed by the uncapped players.
