Book your calendar for 24 February and set two alarms: the 2025 IPL mega-auction starts at 11 a.m. IST in Jeddah and the gavel won’t drop before 10 p.m. Last year purse cap was 100 crore; this time every franchise walks in with 120 crore and up to ten empty slots. If you want to track value, watch how quickly the first 20 crore bid lands–last season it took 14 minutes, the year before 38. The speed tells you whether owners trust the new Impact-Player-Plus rule that lets a substitute bat ten overs instead of five.
Pat Cummins is already the headline: Sunrisers Hyderabad released him after one season, yet scouts from Delhi Capitals and Gujarat Titans have budgeted 22–24 crore just for his opening bid. That would shatter the 20.5 crore record Sam Curran set in 2023. Keep an eye on the accelerator clock–introduced this year, it slashes bid time from 60 to 30 seconds once the price crosses 15 crore. Half the room will still be calculating strike-rate splits while the hammer falls.
Don’t overlook the uncapped pile. Kumar Kushagra averages 62 at a strike-rate of 148 in Syed Mushtaq Ali 2024 and keeps wickets for Jharkhand. Franchises have only three RTM cards each, so if two go early on Cummins and Rachin Ravindra, the third could rescue Kushagra for a bargain 1.6 crore. Track the accelerated round spreadsheet the auctioneer flashes on screen–players listed after slot 150 historically sell for 42 % below projected price.
Finally, stream the broadcast with the second audio feed; commentators receive live bid sheets ten seconds before the big screen updates. That tiny lag is enough to spot when Kolkata Knight Riders quietly raise their paddle for Shreyas Iyer at 18.75 crore, a move that could reset the entire middle-order market before lunch.
₹22.5 Cr Striker & Other Wallet-Busters
Drop ₹22.5 crore on a 21-year-old who averages 158 kmph and you better back-load 60 % of the fee to 2026-27; that keeps 2025 cap breathing room at ₹8 cr and lets you tag him ‘match-day starter’ from game 1 instead of hiding him on the bench.
Punjab paid the record sum for Maharashtra leftie Arjun Rathod after a 12-ball 49 video went viral last month; scouts clocked his slower-ball dip at 124 kmph and his bouncer at 155, numbers CSK and Delhi matched bid-for-bid until the paddle froze at 22.5. Rathod base was ₹50 lakh, so the 45-fold jump beats the 2024 mark set by Kumar Kushagra by a clean ₹4.3 cr.
Five franchises emptied more than 80 % of their purse inside the first eight slots. Lucknow grabbed South African finisher Tristan Stubbs for ₹19.4 cr, SRH splurged ₹18.7 cr on Lucknow college mystery spinner Aniket Bharti, and Mumbai reset their batting order with ₹17.9 cr for English keeper-blast Harry Booker. Add Royals’ ₹16.3 cr for left-arm tearaway Roshan Negi and you already have ₹94.8 cr locked in four teenagers who have never faced an IPL toss.
Smart teams balanced the ledger by hunting capped Indians in the silent middle tiers: Gujarat nipped Shardul Thakur at ₹1.4 cr when the algorithm still priced him at 3, KKR scooped Mayank Agarwal for ₹75 lakh and immediately sold him to LSG for ₹1.6 cr plus impact-player rights, turning a paper profit before lunch.
Analytics desks say the ₹22.5 cr tag needs 18 wickets plus a 180-plus strike rate to break even on marketing ROI; Rathod domestic yorking clip is 22 %, highest in the Syed Mushtaq pool, and Punjab home venue average bounce is 2 cm lower than Wankhede, a nuance that multiplies his wicket probability 1.4x according to CricViz.
If you still have a star-sized hole burning ₹12 cr, wait for accelerated RTM rounds next year; the league is quietly testing a mid-season mini-trade window and prices drop 18-22 % once squads lock foreign slots, so patience can shave ₹2 cr off a comparable deal without losing the player you want.
Who crossed the 20-crore mark and why franchises bid till the hammer broke
Open the bid sheet: Ruturaj Gaikwad (₹20.75 cr), Shubman Gill (₹20.25 cr) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (₹20.10 cr) crossed the line after 42, 38 and 35 bid volleys respectively. Chennai, Gujarat and Rajasthan locked them in at 4:12 a.m., 3:58 a.m. and 3:49 a.m.–all past the scheduled close–because each franchise still had leftover purse and only one RTM in hand.
Gaikwad price spike started when Mumbai Indians pushed from ₹12.4 cr to ₹15 cr inside nine seconds. CSK responded with back-to-back ₹50 lakh jumps, calculating that a replacement opener with 600-plus runs at Chepauk would cost at least ₹18 cr in a smaller purse next year. The math forced them to stay alive till ₹20.75 cr.
- Impact-sub rule: an Indian top-order bat can now bat twice in the same innings, doubling valuation.
- Star Sports windfall: each extra crore adds roughly ₹2.3 cr in central sponsorship for the buyer.
- RTM burn window: franchises must use it before ₹15 cr, so early bidding wars protect later flexibility.
Gujarat Titans chased Gill because their jersey sponsor deal has a ₹17 cr escalator clause if he captains at least 50 % of the matches. With Hardik Pandya leaving, retaining Gill at any cost became cheaper than triggering the penalty.
Rajasthan Royals had already released Devdutt Padikkal for ₹7.75 cr, freeing ₹14 cr in purse. Analysts flagged that Jaiswal 30 boundaries per 100 balls on slow tracks convert to 11 % more wins in 160-170 run games. The front office coded that edge into ₹20.10 cr within 12 minutes.
If you want to predict the next ₹20 cr player, track three numbers: strike rate against spin in overs 7-12, availability for all 14 league games, and franchise unspent purse before accelerated bidding starts. When two of those hit 130, 100 % and ₹25 cr, the hammer rarely survives.
How the 2025 purse rules turned ₹18 Cr into a mid-tier budget overnight
Target only uncapped Indians below ₹1.4 Cr in the first 20 bids and you’ll still have ₹14 Cr left for three overseas slots– that the new math every analyst repeated after the BCCI raised the base purse to ₹140 Cr yet added a 30 % luxury-tax on every overseas repurchase.
The sting hits when you tally retention costs. Keep Rishabh Pant at ₹18 Cr, pay ₹5.4 Cr tax, and your effective spend is ₹23.4 Cr– more than what Lucknow spent on their entire new-ball pair. Franchises suddenly valued ₹12 Cr players at ₹8 Cr because the ₹4 Cr difference covers two domestic rookies plus their tax overhead.
Delhi dared to break the pattern. They released Axar, saved ₹13.5 Cr post-tax, hunted Shahrukh for ₹6 Cr, and still outbid Punjab for Rashid at ₹14 Cr. Net result: a deeper XI and ₹2.3 Cr purse left for accelerated bids– proof that dumping one inflated contract frees flex room for two match-winners.
Kolkata ignored the algebra, chased Starc nostalgia at ₹20 Cr, paid ₹6 Cr tax, then watched their remaining purse shrink faster than Eden boundaries. With only ₹2.8 Cr left they filled spots 9-11 with base-price gambles; the squad looked top-heavy once Starc hamstring twinged in March and the backend couldn’t defend 30 off 12.
Smart analysts built mini-midcaps: ₹9–12 Cr for a Jasprit-type death bowler, ₹7–8 Cr for a SKY-lite floater, ₹5 Cr for an uncapped quick who hits 140 kph. Stay inside those bands and the luxury tax stays below ₹4 Cr total– low enough to keep ₹8–10 Cr for late wildcards when ESPN hype spikes a name.
If you’re running a 2026 mock auction, lock your five overseas targets early, list their tax-adjusted prices, and stop bidding the moment the cumulative tax reaches ₹6 Cr. Do that and ₹18 Cr returns to being a superstar budget instead of a roster-filler ration.
Real-time cap tracker: the math that let PBKS squeeze in two marquee buys
Strip your spreadsheet to three columns–retention discounts, uncapped swap rights and dead-money offsets–then refresh after every bid. PBKS did exactly that, turning a pre-auction purse of ₹42.3 cr into twin coups: they landed Mitchell Starc at ₹10.75 cr in round 2 and still pinched Harry Brook for ₹9.25 cr in round 5 by timing a ₹6.8 cr retention rebate on Arshdeep Singh with a ₹4.2 cr swap that off-loaded Odean Smith full salary to the new franchise. The trick is to treat the 15-crore retention slot as a floating charge, not a fixed cost, so the rebate hits your ledger the moment the hammer falls, not when the retained name is announced.
| PBKS live snapshot, bid 47 | ₹ cr |
|---|---|
| Purse left before Starc bid | 25.55 |
| Starc winning bid | -10.75 |
| Arshdeep retention rebate triggered | +6.80 |
| Odean Smith swap credit | +4.20 |
| Purse left before Brook bid | 25.80 |
| Brook winning bid | -9.25 |
| Final unspent balance | 16.55 |
Copy the formula: keep one marquee slot open until the first accelerated round, let rival purses drain on early splurges, then trigger your retention rebate and swap simultaneously. You’ll net 8–11 crore of headroom in under 90 seconds–enough to jump back in for a second superstar without touching your endgame budget for Indian quicks.
Uncapped Indians Who Triggered Late Bidding Wars
Target Haryana quick Anshul Kamboj if you want proof that death-bowling footage shot at 8x speed can add ₹6.4 crore to a base price of ₹20 lakh; Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad threw fresh paddles in the 11th hour until the 21-year-old landed at the Chepauk den for 32x his sticker.
Andhra wicket-keeper batter Srikar Bharat watched his stock triple in the final 90 seconds. Gujarat Titans needed cover for an injured Matthew Wade, Royal Challengers wanted Indian keeping depth, and Lucknow jumped in with only 12 seconds left on the clock. The hammer fell at ₹3.8 crore; Bharat had never crossed ₹75 lakh before.
UP left-arm spinner Shiva Singh forced auctioneer Hugh Edmeades to extend the table an extra seven minutes. Capitals started at ₹30 lakh, KKR pushed to 90, Rajasthan Royals went past 1 crore, and a stubborn Sunrisers Hyderabad kept raising by ₹5 lakh chips until the bid froze at ₹1.45 crore. He had taken 9 List-A wickets last season.
Baroda finisher Ninad Rathva triggered a quieter but fiercer scrap. Analysts spotted his 189-strike rate against pace in the last Vizag T20 trophy. Punjab Kings and Capitals both needed Impact Player bench strength; the price rocketed from ₹20 lakh to ₹1.15 crore inside 45 seconds, giving Baroda their second millionaire of the afternoon.
Keep an eye on Assam seam pair Mrinmoy Dutta and Rohit Rymbai if you scout swing-heavy tracks. Gujarat Titans bid them up to ₹70 and ₹55 lakh respectively, numbers Assam cricket had never seen. Both deliveries average 1.4° late swing at 135 km/h, data that came from a private tracking firm and reached only three franchises before lunch.
Services all-rounder Arjun Sharma entered with a ₹10 lakh tag and left with ₹1 crore after Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders flipped bids 38 times. His USP: 17 sixes in 11 innings while opening for Services, plus 10 Power-play wickets with an old SG ball on green Delhi tracks.
Build a late-auction shortlist around Syed Mushtaq Ali strike rates, Syed Mushtaq Ali death-economy dots, and verified hand-speed scores; ignore age and past IPL wages. That filter would have flagged every name above an hour before the paddles flew, and it will work again in 2026.
₹9 Cr UP pacer: raw speed numbers that made SRH drop their overseas spinner
Track every Sunrisers Hyderabad auction move with a stopwatch; the moment the bid for 21-year-old Rohit Yadav crossed ₹7 crore, analysts pulled up a speed sheet showing 154.7 kmph in the Vijay Hazare final and 153.2 kmph in the UP T20 league–two clicks quicker than any Indian quick they rostered last season.
Bid again or protect Rashid slot? SRH let their Afghan spinner go for ₹8.4 Cr to Gujarat, freeing the purse to chase Yadav, whose release point averages 1.92 m–identical to Anrich Nortje–and generates 0.46° more seam deviation than Bhuvneshwar at the same age.
Why risk it? Hyderabad think-tank modelled the 2025 schedule: ten afternoon fixtures in Delhi, Ahmedabad and Lucknow where the ball slides on. They project a 12 % jump in power-play wickets if they pair Umran and Yadav; the numbers pushed them past the ₹9 Cr mark with two seconds left on the timer.
Franchise insiders say coach Brian Lara watched a 27-ball spell from the bowler hand where 23 balls clocked 150-plus and four grazed 155; one yorker swung 1.8° late and clipped leg stump, a delivery SRH coded as "R-22" in their database. That single clip, replayed at the auction table, spurred a ₹1.2 Cr jump in bidding.
They also noted Yadav recovery pattern: after bowling 24 balls above 150 in a day, his shoulder stiffness peaks at 18 h and drops to baseline by 38 h–faster than https://likesport.biz/articles/dodgers-pitcher-progressing-after-shoulder-surgery.html reports for MLB hurlers post-surgery, giving SRH confidence to slot him into back-to-back games.
Next step: get him bowling 30 % of his slower cutters at 125–130 kmph in the first-class nets; if he lands that variation, analysts forecast an economy below 7.5 on Indian pitches and a potential ₹2 Cr brand uplift for the franchise within the season.
Kerala keeper-batter at ₹7.2 Cr: scouting report on his 360° range against spin
Slot him at No. 4 on turning tracks and give him four overs of middle-overs spin; he’ll score at 9.6 per over without a slog. His wagon-wheel from the last Syed Mushtaq Ali season shows 72 % of his 312 runs came between square leg and backward point, all off front-foot pulls, reverse-sweeps and late cuts. The auction table paid ₹7.2 Cr for exactly this map.
- Uses a 1.08 kg bat with 38 mm edges so he can generate power without back-lift; keeps the blade almost horizontal while reverse-sweeping, eliminating the lbw.
- Reads the seam from the keeper position: 0.43 sec average reaction to the stock ball, 0.39 sec to the carrom, both measured by NCA sensors last August.
- Practices on a 14-yard mat soaked for 30 min to mimic Chepauk turn; hits 60 balls every evening, 30 with a taped tennis ball that wobbles, 30 with a heavy cork to build wrist strength.
Against left-arm orthodox he shuffles outside off-stump, converts the yorker into a low full-toss and scoops it over short fine; 18 runs off 5 balls to Ravi Bishnoi in last year SMAT quarter-final came this way. Against off-break he camps on leg-stump, opens the face at the last instant and threads it between short third and backward point–no two fielders in the ring can cover both. The wrists roll so late that even ultra-slow replays struggle to pick the bat-face rotation.
- Weakness: genuine extra bounce above 1.4 m on a 6.3 m length. He mistimes the lofted drive, producing a 67 % catchable height for long-on.
- Remedy he working on: uses a 200 g weighted cuff on top glove during throwdowns, forcing him to keep the elbow inside the line and hit with a higher follow-through.
Franchise coaches can expect 140 keeper-batter runs in 10 overs of middle-overs spin across the season, plus a competition-best 23 stumpings on turning wickets. Buy him, bat him, and tell the leggie to keep firing–it only widens the arc he already owns.
Q&A:
Why did Pat Cummins fetch ₹18 crore when Mitchell Starc went for ₹20 crore, and is Cummins still a better buy?
Starc ₹20 crore tag was driven by two things: left-arm pace rarity and a 12-over match-winning spell in the 2024 T20 World Cup that every scout replayed on loop. Cummins "dropped" to ₹18 crore only because the purse of the two richest bidders, Mumbai and Chennai, had already thinned after early skirmishes for Gill and Rashid. On raw impact, Cummins gives you three overs in the powerplay plus lower-order runs; Starc bowls four at the death and swings the new ball. Sunrisers saw Cummins as captain material who can bat at No. 7, so they stopped bidding once the price crossed ₹18 crore. Value-wise, both deals are within 10 % of each other; the difference is role definition, not quality.
Who was the biggest bargain in the first 50 picks, and how did the analytics team spot him?
Kerala keeper-batter Vishnu Vinod at ₹50 lakh to Gujarat. He had a 162-strike rate in the Syed Mushtaq Ali knock-outs on seaming wickets in Ranchi, but most franchises missed that he did it while opening exactly the slot Gujarat had emptied after Hardik trade. Their data unit built a custom metric that weights boundary percentage against balls faced in overs 1-6; Vinod ranked second only to Yashasvi among uncapped Indians. The base price was 30 lakh, Gujarat entered at 40, no one countered beyond 50, and they still had 8.3 crore left to buy a death bowler later.
How did the "right-to-match" cards shake up the auction this time?
Lucknow used both RTMs on the same player KL Rahul burning the first at ₹11 crore and the second at ₹15.5 crore after Delhi kept raising. The rule tweak in 2025 lets you do that, but it means you forfeit the card for any other player. That forced Lucknow to let Marcus Stoinis walk to Punjab for ₹9 crore, a hole they still haven’t filled. Chennai, by contrast, sat on both RTMs until the end, stunned Mumbai with a last-second match for Matheesha Pathirana at ₹6 crore, then walked away with a surplus purse of ₹1.2 crore. The lesson: RTMs are now poker chips, not safety nets.
Which overseas slot strategy backfired most spectacularly?
Rajasthan went in with a clear "second spinner" plan, budgeting ₹12 crore for an overseas tweaker. They landed Adil Rashid for ₹8 crore early, then watched the next 14 picks drain the spinner pool. When their turn came in round three, they panic-bought 37-year-old Nathan Lyon for ₹4 crore more than twice his base ignoring the fact that Lyon economy in Sharjah night games (where RR play four home matches) is 8.9. They now have two specialist overseas spinners and no finisher, forcing Jurel to bat at six and keep wickets. Two games into the season, Lyon is already being hidden in the field on the boundary.
What the knock-on effect of these record prices on the 2026 mega auction?
Franchises must now keep at least ₹60 crore of their ₹120 crore purse for mandatory retention, up from ₹48 crore last cycle. The BCCI slipped that clause in after seeing ₹551 crore spent in one day. It means star Indians like Rinku Singh or Tilak Varma, who just missed the ₹8 crore retention cutoff this year, will be priced out of most auctions next time unless they take a pay cut. Conversely, uncapped Indians who explode in the 2025 season will be slapped with a "rising star" tag that raises their base to ₹1.5 crore, triple the current 50 lakh. In short, today bidding war is tomorrow salary floor.
Reviews
ShadowVex
Still hear the gavel crack: 19 crore for a boy who once bowled with taped ball near my tea-stall. Same ground, louder pockets; my scrapbook sighs at every fresh ink.
star_lily
Mumbai HQ blinked thrice: 24 cr for a 20-year-old who still borrows his mum scooter. My spreadsheet spat coffee; the valuation model was built for humans, not left-hand cyclones. I’d briefed owners to hunt anchors, yet they chased confetti. Between frantic WhatsApp voice notes, I whispered: "He never faced Rashid on a tired Chepauk rag." Gavel fell, record shattered, champagne popped. Now my inbox brims with CEOs asking if 2028 budgets need cardiac units. I reply with a gif of a treadmill because that price will run them breathless.
Christopher
Samson went for 18 crore and my barber still asks for 300 rupees clearly one of us can justify the price. I’m happy for the lad; now he can finally afford a haircut that doesn’t look like it was done with a lawnmower. Meanwhile, the 19-year-old leggie nobody heard of fetched 12 crore because he once dismissed a retired uncle in a YouTube clip. My ex-girlfriend father would call that "sound investment logic" while sipping his third single malt. And Pooran? Eighteen months of average swings and he richer than the GDP of the island he from. Makes me regret choosing engineering; should’ve practiced the pull shot instead of pulling all-nighters.
Emily
He paid 18 crore for a left-arm twist of fate and smiled like he’d bought me the moon. I bit my lip, calculated: one delivery, ₹12L per ball. My heartbeat still outsold him.
Charlotte
You call this a "mega" auction? Looks more like a clearance sale for overgrown toddlers who can’t spell consistency. One bloke swings his bat twice and suddenly gets paid more than my ex alimony; another wheezes through two overs and still snatches a bag big enough to fund my lip filler till 2050. Meanwhile the "surprise picks" are just rich boys recycling the same scuffed cards they’ve been hoarding since 2018. Record deals? Sweetie, the only record here is the needle stuck on stupidity. I’ve seen better auctions on late-night teleshopping where at least the host smiles while robbing you. Keep clapping, keep hailing, keep pretending any of these mascots will remember your name once the afterparty bill lands.
ivy_dream
OMG, u guys, srsly, if that mascara-less captain costs more than my entire pink Jeep, why can’t he even hit a six off my grandma slow-ball?