IPL 2022 may be moved to South Africa, according to reports on Thursday, even as the two new franchises introduced last year get ready to finalise their pre-auction picks for the coming season.
The BCCI's Governing Council in their meeting on Wednesday gave the final green light to the Ahmedabad franchise after questions were raised about its buyer, CVC Capital's association with two betting companies. The board is understood to have discussed the matter in internal committees and sought guidance from external legal experts before making the decision to continue with the commitment.
And now that the teams are official, the Lucknow and Ahmedabad franchise have been given till 5pm on 22 January to finalise their picks.
While the eight previous IPL teams retained four players each from their previous rosters, the two new teams now get to choose three cricketers from all the remaining players and add them to their squads.
The new teams will forfeit Rs 33 crore (Rs 15 crore, Rs 11 crore and Rs 7 crore being the fee slab for the players) if they sign three capped players. They 'spend' Rs 24 crore (Rs 14 crore and Rs 10 crore) for two players and only Rs 14 crore for one player. An uncapped player would cost them only Rs 4 core, as much as for the eight original teams who had the right to sign a maximum of four players.
However, the new teams cannot sign more than one uncapped player and they are permitted to pay more than the stipulated fee on the condition that they would lose that much money from the salary cap of Rs 90 crore.
The 2022 IPL auction is slated to take place in Bengaluru on 12 and 13 February.
According to reports, the Lucknow team is all set to appoint KL Rahul as their captain and are believed to be in talks with Kagiso Rabada and Marcus Stoinis.
Meanwhile, there has been a lot of speculation about Hardik Pandya joining the Ahmedabad franchise. The CVC management is also likely to include the likes Gary Kirsten, Ashish Nehra and Vikram Solanki in their coaching staff.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)