The players of Rising Pune Supergiants and Gujarat Lions are available for fresh auction now.
As two of the scandal-hit franchises Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals are making their comeback to the cash-rich Indian Premier League (IPL) after serving their two-year termination, there were plenty of speculations going on in the media concerning the players’ retention, matching cards and salary cap.
However, all sorts of guesswork was put to rest when the IPL governing council had a meet up with Committee of Administrators (CoA) on December 6 (Wednesday) in New Delhi. Following the meeting, it was announced that all the IPL franchises will be able to retain a maximum of five players through a combination of pre-auction retention and Right To Match (RTM) cards.
A franchise can secure five players by using any combination of retention and right-to-match cards. However, they are not allowed to take more than three in either category. It also implies that a franchise not retaining any player directly can only secure a maximum of three RTMs at the player auction.
Following are the criteria through which the franchises will be able to retain 5 players prior to the auction (Source: IPL official website):
Talking about Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, the IPL governing council made it clear that player pool available for both the returning teams will be from the list of players who represented them respectively in IPL 2015 and who were part of RPS and GL squads in IPL 2017.
"The player pool available for CSK and RR for retention/RTM will be the players' who played for them respectively in IPL 2015 and who were part of Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions squads in IPL 2017," the IPL GC announced.
It also meant that the players such as Ben Stokes or Jason Roy, who haven’t played for either of CSK and RR will be available for fresh auction.