Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Ravichandran Ashwin will continue to play for the same IPL franchise, just that it will not be Chennai Super Kings, for the next two years at least.
In the blink-and-you-miss IPL draft on Tuesday morning in Mumbai, the Indian limited-overs skipper along with R Ashwin, Ajinkya Rahane, Steve Smith and Faf du Plessis have been picked by Sanjeev Goenka’s yet-unnamed Pune franchise.
The other new team in the league - Intex’s Rajkot franchise started their draft process with CSK players Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja. However, their other three picks were all overseas players as they next added Brendon McCullum, James Faulkner and Dwayne Bravo to their line-up of five.
In a pre-decided format (much like when other IPL teams were given the option to retain players) the price tag of the cricketers in today’s draft was allotted much before today. The first pick by each team for Rs 12.5 crore, the second Rs 9.5 crore, third Rs 7.5 crore, fourth Rs 5.5 crore and the fifth Rs 4 crore.
However, if say Pune’s first pick Dhoni earned more than Rs 12.5 crore from CSK, his new team will be obliged to pay him the earlier amount.
Remember, this is the IPL draft and not the auction so it was only the 10 players who found new homes for the next two seasons. The remaining players from the Rajasthan and Chennai franchises now remain in the pool but have to wait till the auction in the 6th of February to find out their new IPL loyalties.
As far as their buying capacities stand in February’s auction, both Pune and Rajkot have Rs 27 crores left in their kitties with the maximum total purse being Rs 66 crore.
IPL 2016 will be played between April 9 to May 29.
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