With the global football extravaganza that is the FIFA World Cup coming to an end on Sunday, it is time for us to shift our attention back to cricket and welcome the cricketing carnival that is the Indian Premier League back into our lives, albeit momentarily.
While the on-field action is still some time away with the 16th edition of the glitzy league unlikely to begin before the last week of March, there will be plenty of off-field action in store later this week as the 10 franchises gear up to engage in a bidding war in the Player Auction that takes place in Kochi on Friday, 23 December.
Read: Full list of retained, released and traded players ahead of IPL Auction
While nearly a thousand players had registered for the player auction, the BCCI shortlisted 405 names from the 991 applicants, 36 of which were later added by the board on the request of the franchises.
With the 405-player list containing several star names, including a certain individual who was the hero of the recently-concluded T20 World Cup final, we take a look at five players who could spark a bidding war among the franchises and end up among the most expensive buys of this year’s auction:
Ben Stokes (Capped)
Country: England
Base Price: Rs 2 crore
Past IPL teams: Rising Pune Supergiant, Rajasthan Royals
It wouldn’t sound too far-fetched to say that Ben Stokes is the hottest commodity in international cricket at the moment. Not only is he leading a revolution in English Test cricket, he is as much a superstar in the only white-ball format that is plays at the moment.
Stokes pulled off a couple of match-winning performances in England’s victorious T20 World Cup campaign last month, including in the final against Pakistan where he struck an unbeaten 52 under pressure to guide the team home in a chase of 138, and will command the attention of every single table when he goes under the hammer on Friday.
Read: Stokes back in the pool – which team will seize England’s ‘hot property
Sam Curran (Capped)
Country: England
Base Price: Rs 2 crore
Past IPL teams: Punjab Kings, Chennai Super Kings
It isn’t that surprising to see another English name here in this list, given the plethora of match-winners at their disposal not just in the shortest format, but in cricket overall. While Stokes stole the limelight in the end with his finishing act in the final against Pakistan, Curran played as crucial a role in England’s path to their second T20 world title, collecting both the ‘Player of the Match’ as well as the ‘Player of the Tournament’ awards in the final.
And like Stokes, he too is no stranger to the IPL, his best performance coming for the Chennai Super Kings under MS Dhoni’s captaincy in 2020 where he scored 186 runs in the middle order and collected 13 wickets in 14 appearances across the season.
Rilee Rossouw (Capped)
Country: South Africa
Base Price: Rs 2 crore
Past IPL teams: Royal Challengers Bangalore
Rilee Rossouw hasn’t exactly set the stage on fire in the IPL so far, having made a total of five appearances across the 2014 and 2015 seasons for the Royal Challengers Bangalore with a total of 50 runs to his name at an average and a strike rate slightly higher than 10 and 100.
The Rilee Rossouw that has made a comeback into the South African team this year following his Kolpak-forced exile however, is a different beast altogether. The left-handed No 3 batter has smashed two tons and an unbeaten 96 in T20Is this year, striking at 176.30, since returning to the Proteas lineup after a six-year absence in the tour of England earlier this summer.
Cameron Green (Capped)
Country: Australia
Base Price: Rs 2 crore
Past IPL teams: None
Cam Green, whose only experience of playing franchise-based T20 cricket has been with the Perth Scorchers in the Big Bash League, is easily among the most exciting cricketers to have emerged in Australian cricket in recent years.
The tall Western Australian all-rounder, who had been drafted into the Aussie white-ball sides this year after dishing out impressive performances for over a year in Tests, will have caught the attention of the IPL franchises with his performances in the T20I series in India earlier this year, where he scored two blazing half-centuries while walking out to open alongside Aaron Finch, the first of which led to a four-wicket win in Mohali.
Sikandar Raza (Capped)
Country: Zimbabwe
Base Price: Rs 50 lakh
Past IPL teams: None
Zimbabwe had quite the fairytale run in the T20 World Cup, where they not only would finish on top of their group in the First Round, but would later go on to beat heavyweight sides such as Pakistan in the highly-anticipated ‘Bean Derby’ in the Super 12s and give tough competition to other sides such as Bangladesh. And few individuals would have had as much impact in their inspired run as Sikandar Raza.
The Pakistan-born all-rounder ended up scoring 219 runs at a strike rate near the 150 mark and also took 10 wickets at an average of 15.60 and an economy under 7. And it’s not just with the bat or ball in hand that Raza has stood out — he is also a gun fielder, as was evident in his run-out of Shaheen Shah Afridi that sealed a memorable one-run win for the Chevrons over Pakistan.
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