The 2021 IPL player auction will take place in Chennai on 18 February, the league revealed on Wednesday with a tweet. The announcement comes after the meeting of the IPL Governing Council on January 6, where it was agreed that the tournament’s 2021 edition will remain an eight-team event.
The first two tests are in Chennai and the last two in Ahmedabad, with the second test of the India-England series set to conclude on February 17. February 18 provides the promoters with a day-long window to execute the auction. By the January 20 deadline, the eight franchises had revealed their list of retained and released players.
However, it is not yet known if the tournament will take place in India. At the meeting at the beginning of the year, the three-member Governing Council, chaired by Brijesh Patel, deliberated on the matter and left their options open. As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to grow in India, it is known that the UAE, which hosted the 2020 edition.
The IPL Governing Council has been unsure about whether to perform matches on a home-and-away basis, which would entail having a minimum of eight venues, with the pandemic throwing up obstacles daily. The other choice was to hold the tournament at a small number of venues, which was also debated last year before transferring the tournament to the UAE, which would eliminate team travel. Centered on this scheme, India’s national T20 tournament, the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, is currently being held.
The February auction will be the first in which teams have no additional funds, which means that a host of big names have had to be released to boost their purses and free up their rosters. Steven Smith, last season’s captain of the Rajasthan Royals, who was released by the franchise, is the best of those names. Smith will be joined by Glenn Maxwell (former Kings XI Punjab), Chris Morris and Umesh Yadav (both Royal Challengers Bangalore), Kedar Jadhav (Chennai Super Kings), Nathan Coulter-Nile and James Pattinson (both Indians from Mumbai), Tom Banton (Kolkata Knight Riders), and Jason Roy (Capitals from Delhi), some of the other high-profile names.
A maximum of 25 players are allowed on their rosters: the Royal Challengers (13), the Kings XI (9), the Rajasthan Royals (8), and the Knight Riders (8) are the teams with the highest number of slots to fill as things stand, while at the moment the most complete roster is available for the Sunrisers Hyderabad (3).