IPL 2022: David Warner, Pat Cummins, Kagiso Rabada among those up for grabs

Sunrisers Hyderabad's David Warner gestures — Hot property: David Warner, left out in the cold by Sunrisers Hyderabad, may see a reversal of fortunes by his stunning turnaround in the last T20 World Cup in the UAE. Image Credit: AFP

Kolkata: The mega auction for 10-team IPL 2022, scheduled to be held in Bengaluru on February 12-13 will have a level playing field after years with some of the biggest names of global cricket, along with marquee Indian talent, set to go up as free agents. Altogether 590 cricketers’ names will go under the hammer, according to the list released by the BCCI on Tuesday.

The Indian cricketers who may be subjected to hectic bidding war include the likes of Shreyas Iyer, senior pros Shikhar Dhawan, R Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina, Yuzvendra Chahal, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar as well as senior pacemen Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav. There will be a keen interest on the movement of Iyer, who decided to leave Delhi Capitals after the resurgent franchise decided to persist with Rishabh Pant as captain after the former came back from a shoulder surgery for the UAE leg of IPL 2021.

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The buzz in the IPL circles is there could be a two-fold tussle between Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore for the Indian middle order batsman Iyer, who showed a lot of promise as a white ball leader with a Delhi team full of several senior players. While Iyer is being seen as a potential replacement for Eoin Morgan, who has been released by KKR, RCB are also in limbo about their captaincy choice following Virat Kohli’s decision to step down from the IPL captaincy as well after failing to bring them the trophy home during his decade-long regin.

KL Rahul, a Bengaluru boy, was being tipped as as a natural choice as Kohli’s replacement at the top but the Indian vice-captain has been roped in by the newcomer Lucknow Supergiants with an astronomical price tag.

The captaincy potential of Shreyas Iyer may see franchises locked in a major bidding war for him among the Indian players. Image Credit: PTI

The international names set to go under the hammer is again like a Who’s Who with in-form stalwarts like David Warner, Player of the Tournament in 2021 T20 World Cup, Pat Cummins, Kagiso Rabada, Trent Boult, Quinton de Kock, Jonny Bairstow, Jason Holder, Dwayne Bravo, Shakib Al Hasan, Wanindu Hasaranga or veteran Faf du Plessis. Warner, who had been an inspirational captain for Sunrisers Hyderabad and had won them their only title in 2016, was rather unceremoniusly dropped by them last season - can see quite a bit of scramble for him as he has been a respected captaincy material.

Amongst 590 players who have registered for the auction, 228 are capped players, 355 are uncapped and seven belong to Associate Nations. A total of 370 Indian players and 220 overseas players will be up for grabs. The highest number of overseas players are from Australia (47), followed by West Indies (34), South Africa (24) and New Zealand (24).