The Indian Premier League has always been a close affair among the teams competing for the prestigious title, and it comes as no surprise that the franchises have decided to retain their big performers. However, there were surprises regarding some of the big names that have been released by respective franchises.
The Royal Challengers Bangalore, who are one of the biggest teams in the IPL, have decided to retain 20 players including Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers, Chris Gayle and KL Rahul. Such kind of retention does not come as a major surprise as they were their major stars in IPL 2016.
The Mumbai Indians have also retained 20 players, out of which six of them are foreign players including Jos Buttler, Tim Southee, Lendl Simmons, Kieron Pollard among others. The Sunrisers Hyderabad, who won the ninth edition of the IPL, have kept back 17 of their players, and they will look to come up with some solid cricket to retain their title.
The two new teams of IPL 2016, Rising Pune Supergiants and Gujarat Lions, have decided to keep 16 players each from their debut season team. Kings XI Punjab have retained 19 players, while Delhi Daredevils have held back 18.
One can expect Kolkata Knight Riders to be very active during the IPL 2017 auctions as they have retained the minimum number of players (14).
The 10th season of the IPL is expected to begin around April, but before that it is the auction scheduled in February, where a large number of players will go under the hammer, which will gather immense interest. All the teams come for the auction well prepared, and one can expect a bidding war in February for some major players and youngsters, who have been making a name for themselves.
Here is the entire list of players retained
Kolkata Knight Riders
Gautam Gambhir, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Kuldeep Yadav, Manish Pandey, Suryakumar Yadav, Piyush Chawla, Robin Uthappa, Shakib Al Hasan, Chris Lynn, Umesh Yadav, Yusuf Pathan, Sheldon Jackson, Ankit Singh Rajput
Royal Challengers Bangalore
Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Mitchell Starc, Yuzvendra Chahal, Harshal Patel, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Sarfaraz Khan, S Aravind, Kedar Jadhav, Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, Samuel Badree, Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Iqbal Abdulla, KL Rahul, Avesh Khan, Tabraiz Shamsi
Sunrisers Hyderabad
Shikhar Dhawan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, David Warner, Moises Henriques, Naman Ojha, Ricky Bhui, Kane Williamson, Siddarth Kaul, Bipul Sharma, Ashish Nehra, Yuvraj Singh, Ben Cutting, Abhimanyu Mithun, Mustafizur Rahman, Barinder Sran, Deepak Hooda, Vijay Shankar
Rising Pune Supergiants
MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane, R Ashwin, Steven Smith, Faf du Plessis, Mitchell Marsh, Ashok Dinda, Ankush Bains, Rajat Bhatia, Ankit Sharma, Ishwar Pandey, Adam Zampa, Jaskaran Singh, Baba Aparajith, Deepak Chahar, Usman Khawaja
Gujarat Lions
Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, James Faulkner, Brendon McCullum, Dwayne Bravo, Aaron Finch, Dwayne Smith, Dinesh Karthik, Dhawal Kulkarni, Praveen Kumar, Andrew Tye, Ishan Kishan, Pradeep Sangwan, Shivil Kaushik, Shadab Jakati, Jaydev Shah
Kings XI Punjab
David Miller, Manan Vohra, Axar Patel, Glenn Maxwell, Gurkeerat Singh, Anureet Singh, Sandeep Sharma, Shardul Thakur, Shaun Marsh, Wriddhiman Saha, M Vijay, Nikhil Naik, Mohit Sharma, Marcus Stoinis, KC Cariappa, Armaan Jaffer, Pardeep Sahu, Swapnil Singh, Hashim Amla
Delhi Daredevils
JP Duminy, Mohammed Shami, Quinton de Kock, Shahbaz Nadeem, Mayank Agarwal, Jayant Yadav, Amit Mishra, Shreyas Iyer, Zaheer Khan, Sam Billings, Sanju Samson, Chris Morris, Carlos Brathwaite, Karun Nair, Rishabh Pant, CV Milind, Syed Ahmed, Pratyush Singh
Mumbai Indians
Rohit Sharma, Kieron Pollard, Lasith Malinga, Harbhajan Singh, Ambati Rayudu, Jasprit Bumrah, Shreyas Gopal, Lendl Simmons, Vinay Kumar, Parthiv Patel, Mitchell McClenaghan, Nitish Rana, Siddhesh Lad, J Suchith, Hardik Pandya, Jos Buttler, Tim Southee, Jithesh Sharma, Krunal Pandya, Deepak Punia
