Premier Badminton League: PV Sindhu leads list of retained players ahead of season 5 auction

World No 1 Tai Tzu Ying, in-form doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty as well as rising star Lakshya Sen will be among the 154 players all set to go under the hammer as the players auction for the fifth season of the Premier Badminton League will be held on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Hyderabad Hunters have retained PV Sindhu for 77 lakhs, the maximum amount for a player. Other retained players include B Sai Praneeth for Bengaluru Raptors, B Summeth Reddy for Chennai Super Starz, Beiwen Zhang for Awadhe Warriors and Kim Gi Jung for Mumbai Rockets.

The PBL, organised by Badminton Association of India and conducted by Sportzlive, will be held from January 20 to February 9, 2020.

While each franchise will have a purse of 2 crore, the maximum amount that can be spent on one player will be are 77 Lakh. The teams can have a maximum of six foreign players and a minimum of three female shuttlers in a squad of not more than 11.

A trading policy will be introduced for the first time as well.

“A minimum of two transactions will be allowed per team in trading that will be effective 15 days after the end of the auction and will get over 10 days before the league kicks off,” said Atul Pande, Managing Director of Sportzlive.

Commonwealth Games bronze medallists Ashwini Ponnappa and Sikki Reddy, Sourabh Verma and Parupalli Kashyap will be part of the 74 players Indian players in the auction along with rising stars Gayatri Gopichand, Ashmita Chaliha and Rutuparna Panda who will be making their PBL debut this season.

Indonesia’s men’s doubles world champions Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan, who took Bengaluru Raptors to the title last season, will be spearheading the 80 foreign players list this season. Doubles superstar Lee Yong Dae will be returning as well along with singles exponents Michelle Li of Canada.

The fifth season will also see first-timers in men’s singles world No 69 Kazumasa Sakai from Japan and Huang Jia Hong from China, with the latter being accompanied by his compatriot PBL regular Tian Houwei.

The format of the upcoming edition of the league remains the same with each tie consisting of five matches – two men’s singles matches, one women’s singles match, one men’s doubles match and one mixed doubles match.

The 21-day event will witness seven teams Awadhe Warriors (Lucknow), Bengaluru Raptors (Bengaluru), Mumbai Rockets (Mumbai), Hyderabad Hunters (Hyderabad), Chennai Superstarz (Chennai), North Eastern Warriors (North East) and Pune 7 Aces (Pune). The matches will be played in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Lucknow.