The Indian Premier League Governing Council, on Saturday, announced player regulations for the upcoming 2025-2027 seasons of the league, which for the first-time ever includes a match fee for players.
In addition to the contracted amount, players will now be eligibile for a match fee of Rs 7.5 lakh for featuring in a match. The inclusion of match fees now means that a player, who plays all the 14 league stage matches will be eligible to earn a total of Rs 1.05 crore during the course of the season over and above his contracted amount.
The match fees also covers the impact player, who might not play the entire match. The impact player rule is slated to stay on until 2027 despite some strong opposition from star cricketers.
The governing council also set the total number of retentions per team to six players with a mega auction scheduled ahead of the 2025 Indian Premier League. The six retained players can either be via the pre-auction retentions or by using the Right to Match card during the auction.
Each team can retain a total of five capped players – Indian and international – and a maximum of two uncapped players.
Besides, an Indian capped player will be counted as uncapped if he has not represented the country in Playing 11 in five years preceding to the auction. This rule means that the Chennai Super Kings can retain their star wicketkeeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni as an uncapped player.
Each uncapped player can be retained at a price of Rs 4 crore, which will be deducted from the team’s total auction pool of Rs 120 crore for the 2025 Indian Premier League season.
If the team, retains five capped players the first retained player will get Rs 18 crore, the second will get Rs 14 crore, the third will get Rs 11 crore.
However, in order to encourage the franchises to release more players into the auction, the price for fourth and fifth retained capped players has been set at Rs 18 crore and Rs 14 crore respectively.
As per a report in Cricbuzz, the franchises will have time until 5 pm IST on October 31, 2024 to submit their final list of retained players to the Indian Premier League governing council.
The governing council has also come down heavily on players, who withdraw from the tournament at the last moment after the auction, leaving teams in a lurch.
“Any player who registers in the player auction and after getting picked at the auction, makes himself unavailable before the start of the season, will get banned from participating in the tournament and player auction for 2 Seasons,” read a statement from the Indian Premier League.
Moreover, all overseas players have to register themselves for the mega auction. The failure to do so means that the unregistered players will be ineligible for the following season’s auction.
