Mumbai: A maximum of 66 players could be off the IPL mega auction roaster. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is close to finalising auction regulations, where the franchises would be given the option to retain as many as six players, before entering the auction table.

The franchises could arrive at this number by retaining them outright or utilising the Right to Match Card (RTM). It remains to ascertained what the cap on the maximum number of Indian or overseas players to be retained and use of RTM would be.

A liberal retention policy would suit five-time winners Mumbai Indians who have a number of India heavyweights in their ranks that include former captain Rohit Sharma, current skipper Hardik Pandya, Indian T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav and pace ace Jasprit Bumrah. The churn in the Mumbai Indians camp, last year, threatened to have direct ramifications on the national team, but they were able to rally together and win India the 2024 T20 World Cup.

In the last mega auction in 2022, teams were allowed only four retentions; a maximum of three Indians, with no RTM card permissible. This was to give new entrants Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants a wider pool of players to build their squad.

Previously, in the 2018 mega auction, five players could be retained - a maximum of three pre-auction and rest through RTM. In the event of teams retaining fewer than three players, three RTMs were allowed.

Similarly, in the 2014 mega auction too, teams could retain as many as five players, but not more than four Indians. No RTM cards were introduced at the time.

In a recent meeting of IPL officials and franchise owners, opinions were divided on what the auction regulations should be. 2024 winners Kolkata Knight Riders wanted teams to be allowed to retain their core and had put up the radical idea of allowing eight RTMs. Runners-up Sunrisers Hyderabad wanted to retain a lot of their team as well but wanted flexibility with regulations as many of their key assets like Pat Cummins, Travis Head, Heinrich Klaasen are foreigners. Other teams like LSG, keen on starting fresh, are known to have voted for fewer retentions.

Franchises will be given ample time to declare their retentions for the mega auction, likely to be staged in late November. Teams sitting on the fence over retentions would want to closely evaluate the cost-benefit analysis before deciding if a player could prove to be a bargain buy if they chased him in the auction. Not every team maximises their retention quota, like Punjab Kings in 2022, when they retained only two players.

The team salary cap will go up from the ₹100 crore that were allowed in last year’s auction.

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