The Indian Premier League is set to don a new avatar with a lot of changes being made in the Player retention and Right To Match Cards (RTM). In Right To Match Cards, the franchise has the option to purchase back the player bought by another team at the price at which he was sold.

The rules of the auction are as under:

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(A). Player Retention Policy

An IPL Franchise is eligible to secure up to 5 players by virtue of a combination of Player Retention (Pre Player Auction) and Right to Match (RTM) (During the Player Auction).

• A maximum of either 3 retentions or 3 RTM at the discretion of the franchises
• If there is no retention before player auction then franchises can have up to 3 RTM

Following will apply irrespective of player retention or RTM –

A maximum number of 3 Capped Indian players.
A maximum number of 2 Overseas players.
A maximum number of 2 Uncapped Indian players.

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The player pool available for CSK and RR for retention/RTM will be the players’ who played for them respectively in IPL 2015 and who were part of RPS and GL squads in IPL 2017. Players like Ben Stokes and Jason Roy who were picked by RPS and GL respectively and had not represented any franchises before will go under the hammer.

If a team opts for 3 retentions, it will cost them 33 crores (15 + 11 + 7).

For 2 retentions, an amount of 21 crores (12.5+ 8.5) will be deducted from the purse.

Only 1 retention will cost teams only 12.5 crores but will not give them an additional RTM card and hence they can secure up to maximum 4 players from last year”s squad.

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(B) Salary Cap

The maximum salary cap has been increased from 66 crores in 2017 to 80 Crores. The salary cap will further see a rise of 2 crores in 2019 and 3 more crores in 2020.

2018 – INR 80 Crore
2019 – INR 82 Crore
2020 – INR 85 Crore

Teams will have to spend at least 75% of salary cap each season.

(C) Maximum size of squad

Every IPL squad must have a maximum of 25 players (up to 8 overseas) and a minimum of 18 players, says the IPL Governing Council. This has been brought down from 27 total and maximum 9 overseas slots in 2017.

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(D) Reserve price for uncapped players 

Uncapped players will heave a sigh of relief. The new reserve price has been increased to INR 20 lakh from the existing INR 10 lakh.

– by Atharva Apte