At 450,000 dollars, Warnie to be highest paid IPL player

Former Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne will in all probability leave most of his former team mates in the shade by commanding the highest reserve price at todays historic player auction in India.

Melbourne, Feb.20 : Former Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne will in all probability leave most of his former team mates in the shade by commanding the highest reserve price at today's historic player auction in India.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Warne is expected to net 450,000 dollars for his 40-odd day participation in the IPL Twenty20 competition organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The IPL will auction about 90 players from around the world in a hotel room in Mumbai this afternoon where around 45 million dollars will be spent on the cream of the world's cricketing talent.

Warne is the No. 1 ranked player and is up for sale for a minimum of 450,000 dollars. Fellow retiree Glenn McGrath is to be auctioned off for 350,000 dollars, while Australian captain Ricky Ponting is to be auctioned off for 325,000 dollars.

Victorian all-rounder Cameron White will get 100,000.

The players get to keep all the money that is paid for them at the auction and Adam Gilchrist and Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni are likely to snare the highest bids.

The franchises have five million dollarsto spurge on eight recruits so there is a strong chance some players will attract around one million dollars for 44 days work.

The auction will not include what the IPL call icon players - Indian stars Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh and Sachin Tendulkar - who have been given permission to play for their home cities.

They will receive the same figure paid for the dearest player in their franchise plus a 15 per cent loading.

Today's auction will change world cricket forever.

If the new Twenty20 league, which starts in April, succeeds it will be given its own place on the cricket calendar and immediately threaten the future of the 50-over game.

There is a fear among the game's senior administrators that the Twenty20 format could become the dominant form of the game over the next few decades.

Each IPL team will have a pool of 16 players, of whom eight can be international and four from the Under-22 level or from the catchment area where the team is based.

The league will involve 59 matches and include 3.5 million dollars prize money.

ANI