Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli and his predecessor Mahendra Singh Dhoni are among the top players who are retained by their respective IPL franchises, Royal Challengers Bangalore and comeback outfit Chennai Super Kings respectively. The Indian Premier League (IPL) will be entering its 11th season this year and the deadline to submit the list of retained players was January 4. As per the latest guidelines issued by the IPL governing council, each team was allowed to opt for up to five players by virtue of a combination of Player Retention (Pre Player Auction) and Right to Match (RTM) (during the Player Auction).
Among these players, there can be a maximum of either three retentions or three RTMs at the discretion of the franchises and if there is no retention before the player auction, then franchises can have up to three RTMs, as per the norms put in place by the IPL GC.
The break-up is: Maximum number of 3 capped Indian players, 2 overseas players and 2 uncapped Indian players each. The player retention price guideline for salary cap charged has also been set as Rs 33 crore (for 3 players pre auction), Rs 21 crore (for 2 players pre auction) and Rs 12.5 crore (for 1 player retained pre-auction).
The council also revealed that each team can consist of a maximum number of 25 players (up to 8 overseas players) and a minimum of 18. 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 GL squads in IPL 2017, as per the norms.
This year, the salary cap has also been increased from Rs 60 crore to Rs 80 crore and will increase to Rs 82 and 85 crore respectively in 2019 and 2020. However, the minimum spend has been fixed at 75 per cent of the salary cap for each season.
Among the top Indian players, MS Dhoni returned to Chennai Super Kings with Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli stays with Royal Challengers Bangalore while Rohit Sharma will once again lead the Mumbai Indians. Hardik Pandya was retained by Mumbai Indians while young Shreyas Iyer will once again represent the Delhi Daredevils. However, some veterans like Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh were released by their respective franchises.
The surprise packages of the retention were Punjab’s Axar Patel, Bangalore’s Sarfraz Ahmed and Delhi’s Chris Morris.
Here is the IPL 2018 retained players list of all teams:
1. Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah.
2. Sunrisers Hyderabad: David Warner and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
3. Kolkata Knight Riders: Andre Russell and Sunil Narine.
4. Rajasthan Royals: Steve Smith.
5. Chennai Super Kings: Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja.
6. Delhi Daredevils: Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant.
7. Kings XI Punjab: Axar Patel.
8. Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers and Sarfraz Khan.
