The IPL 2020 auction long-list was sent to franchises on Monday, December 2, a fortnight ahead of auction day. The original list will be pruned to prepare the final auction list for the tournament’s 12th edition.

The IPL auction

The IPL 2020 auction will be held in Kolkata, for the first time, on December 19, 2019. The previous auction was in Jaipur. Hugh Edmeades will be the auctioneer, the same as last year.

Players

A total of 971 players have registered for the auction. From this pool, franchises will be shortlisting players to make it to the final auction list. The teams have time till 11:30 GMT on December 9 to submit their respective lists.

A total of 73 spots are up for grabs, of which only 29 can be overseas players. Talk about tight competition.

In the 971 registered players, there are 215 capped players, 754 uncapped players, and two players from Associate nations [Brandon Glover, Netherlands; Ali Khan, USA]

Country-wise breakdown

Afghanistan 19 | Australia 55 | Bangladesh 6 | England 22 | Netherlands 1 | New Zealand 24 | South Africa 54 | Sri Lanka 39 | USA 1 | West Indies 34 | Zimbabwe 3

India
719 players [19 capped + 634 uncapped + 60 uncapped who have played at least one IPL game]

Overseas
258 players [198 capped + 60 uncapped; 2 Associate team players]

Base price brackets – top tiers

INR 2 Crore / £216k: Chris Lynn, Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Marsh, Angelo Mathews, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Dale Steyn

INR 1.5 Crore / £162k: Eoin Morgan, Jason Roy, Chris Woakes, David Willey, Shaun Marsh, Kane Richardson, Kyle Abbott, Chris Morris, Robin Uthappa, Piyush Chawla

INR 1 Crore / £108k: Tom Banton

None of the capped Indian players have listed their base price at INR 2 crore.

[Source: ESPNcricinfo]

Big names missing

Joe Root and Mitchell Starc have made themselves unavailable for the auction. Starc opted out of last year’s auction as well, while Root went unsold.