IPL 2026 auction: Green and greenhorns strike gold in auction of contracts

The ten franchises acquired a total of 29 overseas players for a total of INR 128.05 crore on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi in the IPL 2026 auction, while the 48 Indians made them spend INR 87.40 crore. Remarkably, most of that 87.40 crore went to uncapped Indians. Only nine capped Indian players were brought in by the franchises, including six at their base price. The base price of five of those was only INR 75 lakh, with Akash Deep priced at INR 1 crore.

Two things have been on the franchises' minds: age and local experience.

It looked like Indian players who are likely to last were the target. Performers at the domestic level, either in the state-run leagues or BCCI events, were richly rewarded.

A total of 32 players bought by franchises were under 25 on auction day. Of them, 29 were Indians. Meanwhile, 20 players aged 30 or higher fetched bids on Tuesday, and only three of them were Indians - Venkatesh Iyer, Rahul Tripathi and Praveen Dubey.

Only three Indians aged 26 or more earned at least twice their base price - Rahul Chahar and Iyer, the capped Indians, and the uncapped Auqib Nabi.

Tripathi was the oldest Indian bought and, overall, was only behind David Miller, the only player aged 35 or more. Both got sold at their base prices, much like many of the other senior pros.

Thirteen of the 20 players who were aged 30 or higher got sold at their base price, and only six went beyond twice their base price. Seventeen of those 20 were overseas players, with 11 picked at their base price.

The biggest profit-maker among them was Liam Livingstone, bought for INR 13 crore by Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), 6.5 times his base price, but in the accelerated auction after going unsold in the first round.

Cameron Green's debut at the IPL auction in 2023 nearly made him the most expensive player in league history, as he fetched INR 17.5 crore from Mumbai Indians (MI), finishing only behind Sam Curran's INR 18.25 crore in the same auction.

On Tuesday, again, his presence broke records, this time fetching INR 25.20 crore, making him the league's most expensive overseas player and the third-most-expensive ever. It was his former team, MI, that bid for him first before three other teams entered the fray.

He was eventually sold to Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), with the paddle raised 113 times by the four teams to get to that point. Green, however, will get only INR 18 crore, while the rest goes to players' welfare under the new auction rules.

Green's actual auction price would translate to US$2.98 million (approx.), which was US$2.1 million (approx.) back in 2023. He is only the third player to be bought for US$2-million plus twice in IPL auctions, after Yuvraj Singh and Pat Cummins.

However, no player before him has been paid 17 crore or more in INR twice. The closest is Cummins, who earned INR15-crore plus twice - INR 20.5 by SRH and INR 15.5 by KKR.

Matheesha Pathirana was the second-most-expensive player on Tuesday, earning an INR 18 crore bid from KKR, which is by far the highest for a player from Sri Lanka.

There has been only one previous instance of a Sri Lanka cricketer fetching roughly half what Pathirana got: Wanindu Hasaranga, who was bought for INR 10.75 crore by Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in 2022. In fact, the price paid for Pathirana was the joint-second-highest ever for a player registered as a specialist bowler, behind only Mitchell Starc's INR 24.75, also by KKR in 2024.

The activity of teams at this auction was always going to vary, given the purse dynamics. KKR had INR 64.3 crore to buy a maximum of 13 players, while Chennai Super Kings (CSK) had INR 43.4 crore for a maximum of nine players. MI, on the other hand, only had INR 2.75 crore of the 125 crore allocated. It meant they entered the auction with the smallest purse available to any team since INR was adopted as the primary currency in 2014.

However, the amount MI spent on Tuesday wasn't the lowest a team has spent at an auction. Rajasthan Royals (RR) spent only INR 2.1 crore for buying six players ahead of the 2015 season.

The INR 2.2 crore spent by MI was about 1% of the total spending, comfortably the lowest by any team at an auction across the 19 editions. RR, from that 2015 auction, fall to second on this list, with their spend of INR 2.1 crore accounting for 2.4% of the INR 87.6 crore by all teams.

KKR feature on the other side of the same list, with the INR 63.85 crore they spent accounting for 29.64% of the auction's total spend of INR 215.45 crore. This was only the third time a team accounted for a quarter of the total spending.

As much as 43.84% of the 2015 auction's spending came from the purse of Delhi Daredevils (now Delhi Capitals), who used up INR 38.4 crore of the INR 87.6 by the total of eight sides, while Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings) accounted for 30.43% in 2019 (INR 32.5 crore of INR 106.8).

In the previous two cases, they accounted for one-fifth of the total spend in the respective auctions, whereas for KKR, it was one-sixth of the total spend, as their purse and big buys played a role.

CSK have rarely been a team that spends heavily. In all of their history, there have been only four buys of ten or more crore - one such buy every year since 2022.

But this time, they put that away and spent INR 14.2 crore on two players - Prashant Veer and Kartik Sharma. Only once before have they spent more to buy a player, INR 16.25 crore, for Ben Stokes in 2023, and only once previously they spent over ten crore for an Indian player - INR 14 crore for Deepak Chahar in 2022.

Both Veer and Kartik are yet to get a taste of the IPL, making the demand they were in even more impressive. They were the only players to receive bids from five different franchises on Tuesday, while five other players attracted bids from four teams.

No Indian who had never been to the IPL had ever bought for such a price. In fact, the previous highest was INR 8.4 crore, for Varun Chakravarthy by Punjab in 2019, and for Sameer Rizvi by CSK in 2024. Delhi Capitals (DC) also put in INR 8.4 crore for another first-timer, Auqib Nabi, on Tuesday.

Only three players' maiden IPL contracts were bigger than those of Veer and Sharma - Green's INR 17.5 crore by MI in 2023, INR 15 crore for Kyle Jamieson from RCB in 2021, and INR 14.5 crore by Rising Pune Supergiant for Stokes in 2017.

Avesh Khan was the only uncapped player before Kartik and Veer to fetch INR 10 crore in an IPL auction. Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) bought him for that amount in 2022. Avesh's final price was 50 times his base price of INR 20 lakh, which remains a record.

That ratio is 47.33 for Kartik and Veer, whose base price was INR 30 lakh each. It is the second-highest selling price-to-base price difference in IPL auctions.

Kartik is yet to turn 20, while Veer celebrated his 20th birthday only last month. No player has previously earned INR 10 crore or more in an auction before turning 23.

Green was the previous youngest to fetch INR 10 crore at auction, when he was 23 years and 203 days old on auction day for the IPL 2023, followed by Ishan Kishan, who was 23 years and 209 days old when MI spent INR 15.25 crore for him. in 2022.

As many as 95 players, including 61 unsold players, went under the hammer before Punjab Kings (PBKS) raised the paddle for the first time on Tuesday, for Aman Khan. The bid, however, felt like a formality to make everyone aware of their presence as CSK bought the player for INR 40 lakh from a base price of INR 30 lakh.

Their first signing, however, was Cooper Connolly, who came a little later. The Australia allrounder was the 110th player to go under the hammer after 41 players had been sold to the remaining nine franchises.

In all, PBKS bid for only six players, the fewest by any team at the auction, two of which were base-price buys - Vishal Nishad and Dubey. Their costliest signing was Ben Dwarshuis at INR 4.4 crore, and the other player they bid for unsuccessfully was Rahul Chahar.

PBKS had only four slots to fill going into the auction, the fewest of the ten sides. It was the reason they raised the paddle only 31 times across six players, followed by 34 times by Gujarat Titans (GT) for nine players. GT had only five slots available and successfully filled them, utilising INR 11.21 crore of the available purse of INR 12.9 crore.

It wasn't a familiar sight for PBKS, who generally turn up at auctions with a lot of money and slots to fill. It is the second time they have had the fewest percentage of buys at an IPL auction.

The other instance was in the auction before the 2015 season, where they bought only three of the 67 players signed across the eight tables. At the time, they had a purse of INR 12.6 crore to buy six players, but utilised only INR 3.4 crore to buy three. They ended the auction with a squad strength of 22 players, the fewest among the teams.

Their activity at the 2015 auction was a follow-up to their first IPL final appearance. Similarly, Tuesday's auction came after making the playoffs for the first time since 2014 and subsequently only their second final ever.