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350 players will go under the hammer in IPL auctions on Saturday and Sunday at Bangalore. All the 10 teams including the two new IPL teams Sahara Pune Warriors and Kochi will try to grab the players. Each team has been allotted a total of 9 million dollars for spending on the players auctions as well as uncapped domestic players. Chennai Superkings have retained M S Dhoni, M Vijay, Suresh Raina and Albie Morkel (South Africa) while Mumbai Indians have also retained all the four players Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh, Lasith Malinga (Sri Lanka) and Kieron Pollard (West Indies). So, these teams will effectively have only 4.5 million dollars left in their purse. Rajasthan Royals has retained Shane Warne (Australia) and Shane Watson (Australia) leaving them with USD 5.9 million available to spend. Delhi Daredevils and Royal Challengers Bangalore have retained only player in Virender Sehwag and Virat Kohli respectively enabling them to have a balance of 7.2 million dollars available. Deccan Chargers, Kolkata Knight Riders and Kings XI Punjab have not retained any players and will have the complete 9 million available for purchase alongwith the two new franchisees. Many new faces including cricketing legends such as Brian Lara would be available for purchase at the auction which will be conducted by professional auctioneer Richard Madley, from England, who has conducted each of the previous IPL player auctions too. However, a few players like Matthew Hayden, Glenn McGrath, Shane Bond and Anil Kumble who played previous editions of IPL has decided to give the auctions a miss due to personal reasons. The first round of auctions would be for the players with the highest base price of $400,000 followed by second round with players with base price of $300,000 and then with $200,000 and $100,000 base price and so on. The two day auction would start at 10 A.M. Indian time tomorrow and will be broadcast live on Set Max.

Players with base price of $400,000 are:

Adam Gilchrist, Brett Lee, Shaun Marsh, James Anderson, Kevin Pietersen, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, Luke Wright, Michael Yardy, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Daniel Vettori, Brendon McCullum, Ross Taylor, Graeme Smith, AB de Villiers, Mahela Jayawardene, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Brian Lara and Chris Gayle.

Players with base price of $300,000 are:

Yusuf Pathan, Zaheer Khan, VVS Laxman, Jacques Kallis, Muttiah Muralitharan, Andrew Symonds, Cameron White, David Hussey, Shaun Tait, Kumar Sangakkara, Angelo Mathews, Simon James Cook and Steven Davies.

Players with base price of $200,000 are:

Gautam Gambhir, Irfan Pathan, Ashish Nehra, Sreesanth, Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthik, RP Singh, Robin Uthappa, Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Murali Karthik, Pragyan Ojha, Shakib Al Hasan, Michael Hussey, James Hopes, Brad Haddin, Brad Hodge, Doug Bollinger, Callum Ferguson, Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle, David Warner, Steven Smith, Dirk Nannes, Paul Collingwood, Owais Shah, Matt Prior, Ravi Bopara, Eoin Morgan, Ryan Sidebottom, Jonathan Trott, Joe Denly, Ajmal Shahzad, Tim Bresnan, Kyle Mills, Jacob Oram, Herschelle Gibbs, Mark Boucher, J P Duminy, Johan Botha, Dale Steyn, Sanath Jayasuriya, Ajantha Mendis, Dwayne Bravo and Darren Stevens.

Some Prominent Players with base price of $100,000 are:

Tamim Iqbal, Mortaza, R Ashwin, Morne Morkel, Dwayne Smith, Chanderpaul, Sarwan, Vaas, Fernando, Tharanga, Maharoof, Morne Morkel, Charl Langeveldt, Ntini, Kemp, Wayne Parnell, Ryan McLaren, Nathan McCullum, Time Southee, Scott Styris, Surabh Tiwary, Pujara, Vinay Kumar, Shikhar Dhawan, Badrinath, Parthiv Patel, Amit Mishra, Ravindra Jadeja, Munaf Patel, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Ian Bell, Sajid Mahmood, Ben Hilfenhaus, Philip Hughes, Adam Voges, Simon Katich and Tim Paine.

To view the complete list of players with base prices and details check this pdf.

NOTE: Domestic Indian uncapped players are not in the auction as they will be be available only after the IPL instructs them later. The domestic players have been broken down in to three categories, depending on how much first-class cricket they have played. The lowest tier of players can sign for Rs 10 lakhs (US$21,500) per year, the middle tier for Rs 20 lakhs ($43,000) and the top tier – those who have played at least five seasons of Ranji Trophy – will be paid Rs 30 lakhs ($64,500) per year.

The Indian Premier League will expand the number of franchisees to 10 franchisees with the addition of two new franchisees for the IPL 2011 season onwards. The IPL Management has already put application forms for the two new teams on sale. There are twelve cities in contention for the two new teams which include Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Dharamsala, Indore, Cuttack, Gwalior, Visakapatnam, Rajkot, Pune, Vadodara and Kochi. The first eight cities already have cricket stadiums while stadiums are in construction in the last four cities. The base price for the bidding for the two new franchisees are $225 million which is more than four times the base price of $50 million when the original eight franchisees were auctioned in 2008. The number of games in IPL would also increase to 94 games from the year 2011 instead of the present set of 59 games.

As per reports, the IPL Management has also set tougher conditions for applying for the two new teams. One of the major conditions is that the bidder has to have at least $1 billion (Rs.4,580 crores) and if a group makes a bid, it must contain an individual or a single party with that amount of money. As per the IPL’s tender condition, the bidders should submit a Rs 460-crore bank guarantee to participate in the bidding process. The IPL has set a base price of US $ 225 million per franchise. Many are also speculating that Ahmedabad might be one of the strongest contenders for an IPL team. The Ahmedabad based billionaire Gautam Adani-owned Adani Group has also submitted its bid for a new franchisee.

Videocon Industries-led team called P Sports Vision is supposed to have placed bid for Pune franchisee. There are also reports that the guardians of the laws of cricket, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is also supposed to be running for the Pune franchisee. The other prominent bidders might include Sahara Group, Jaypee Group and ICICI Ventures. Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel is also speculated to have placed bid for either Pune or Nagpur franchisee. Bollywood stars like Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgn had also showed interest though there is no confirmation if any film stars have bid for any team this time round. There have been 11 bids supposed to have been submitted till now for the two new teams.

The winning bids for the two new franchisees would be revealed on Sunday, March 7 at 1200 IST. Many are speculating that Pune and Ahmedabad might have good chances of hosting the two new teams though everything would be revealed only this Sunday.