As many as 346 cricketers, including 226 Indians, have been shortlisted for the upcoming auctions of the Indian Premier League. In the base price bracket of Rs 2 crore, there are nine players, which surprisingly has no Indian team in it.
Brendon McCullum, Chris Woakes, Lasith Malinga, Colin Ingram, Shaun Marsh, Corey Anderson, Sam Curran, Angelo Mathews and D'Arcy Short are the players in the highest base price bracket.
Jaydev Unadkat has the highest base price for an Indian with a sum of Rs 1.5 crore - a figure he shares with nine other foreign players. As many as 19 players have listed themselves at Rs 1 crore, a list which has only four Indians - Yuvraj Singh, Wriddhiman Saha, Mohammed Shami and Axar Patel.
Tamim Iqbal was the notable omission from Bangladesh as only two Bangladesh players have been shortlisted - Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah. There are eight players shortlisted from Afghanistan and a solitary player, Muhammad Khan, has made it from the US.
Number of players from each country: India - 226, South Africa - 26, Australia - 23, West Indies - 18, England - 18, New Zealand - 13, Afghanistan - 8, Sri Lanka - 7, Bangladesh - 2, Zimbabwe - 2, USA - 1, Ireland - 1, Netherlands - 1
The auction will have a set of internationally capped players going under the hammer first, filtered by specialist categories, which will then be followed by uncapped players. Among Indian uncapped players, the biggest attractions could well be Tamil Nadu's mystery spinner Varun Chakravathi and Mumbai allrounder Shivam Dubey.
The franchises have also requested to add 20 additional players which include Alex Carey, Australian wicket-keeper for the T20Is, Laurie Evans, the England player who scored 614 runs in this year's Blast - the most by any player, and Ajay Rohera, the 21-year old young man from Madhya Pradesh batsman who set a world record with the highest score on first-class debut, when he made 267 not out against Hyderabad.
