IPL players auction in Mumbai today

The Indian Premier League (IPL) players auction will be held here today.

Mumbai, Feb 20 : The Indian Premier League (IPL) players' auction will be held here today.

A total of 77 players, both Indian and foreigners, will go under the hammer.

The eight franchises, which spent over 718 million dollars to get the team rights, will be present at the auction. They are Mumbai team (Mukesh Ambani), Bangalore (Vijay Mallya), Kolkata (Shah Rukh Khan), Chandigarh (Preity Zinta), Jaipur (Emerging Media), Hyderabad (Deccan Chronicle), Chennai (India Cements) and Delhi (GMR Group).

Five iconic players of India - Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag - are not part of the bid process as they have to play for their respective city franchises.Tendulkar will be part of the Mumbai franchise owned by Ambhani's REL, Dravid will play for the Bangalore franchise owned by Vijay Mallya's UB Group, Ganguly for Kolkata owned by Shahrukh's Red Chillies Entertainment, Yuvraj for Mohali owned by Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, R Burman and Group and Sehwag will lead the Delhi team, owned by GMR Holdings.

The other franchise owners are Deccan Chronicle Group (Hyderabad), India Cements (Chennai), Delhi (GRM Group) and Emerging Media Group (Jaipur).

Other global cricket stars on sale are Ricky Ponting, Muttiah Muralitharan, Adam Gilchrist, Shoaib Akhtar, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Shaun Pollock.

The IPL Governing Council has decided that not more than five million dollars and not less than 3.3 million dollars can be bid for each lot of international players by each franchise.

The contract with the player will be for a fixed term of three years and each franchise can have a maximum of two centrally contracted Australian players.

While each team will be allowed to register a maximum of eight foreign players, only four will be able to play in the XI.

In the tournament, based on Twenty20 matches, 59 matches will be played in 44 days starting April 18.

ANI