Live Blog: Indian Premier League Auction 2018

The much-awaited mega-auction for the forthcoming eleventh season of the Indian Premier League is finally underway in Bengaluru. There hasn’t been an IPL auction of this magnitude since the inaugural year of 2008 where each player was up for grabs.

With the squads for all franchises almost wiped out, the auction will be giving all the teams the opportunity to build a solid team for the future.

The teams will, once again, get to form their core for the future. A vicious bidding war is expected in the next couple of days as the franchises will be desperate to form the best team that can serve them well over the next few years.

This year’s auction will witness 578 players including 361 Indians going under the hammer. There are 16 top players awarded marquee status and a base price of Rs 2 crore with notable among them being Ravichandran Ashwin, Ben Stokes, Shikhar Dhawan, Mitchell Starc, Chris Gayle, and Dwayne Bravo.

Meanwhile, all the teams have already retained some players from last year while Rajasthan and Chennai Super Kings, who are returning after serving a two-year suspension, were given an option of retaining players from their squad from two years ago.

Here is the list of the players retained by each franchise: