Kerala captain Sachin Baby is among a dozen Malayali players registered for the upcoming Indian Premier League auction scheduled in Saudi Arabia's Jeddah on November 24 and 25. The uncapped players also include Vishnu Vinod and Mohammed Azharuddeen who boast IPL experience.
Rohan S Kunnummal (26), Shoun Roger (22), Vignesh Puthur, Vaisakh Chandran (28), Midhun S (30), Abhishek J Nair, M Ajinas (27), Salman Nizar (27) and Abdul Basith (26) are the other Kerala players to have made the auction list.
All the twelve Kerala cricketers have a base price of Rs 30 lakhs.
At 35, Sachin Baby, the top-scorer of the inaugural season of the Kerala Cricket League, will hope to find a bidder at Jeddah. The former India A star has represented Rajasthan Royals, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Sunrisers Hyderabad in the previous editions. Vishnu Vinod, who played alongside Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya for the Mumbai Indians, is also hopeful of finding bidders.
IPL mega-auction
Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul and Arshdeep Singh will headline a 574-strong list of players with top base price of Rs 2 crore at the auction. 13-year-old India U-19 cricketer Vaibhav Suryavanshi from Bihar is the youngest among the lot at Rs 30 lakh base price.
The BCCI on Friday pruned the initial list of 1574 players down to 574 out of which 366 are Indians and 208 from overseas. All the current India players are in top base price bracket.
Apart from Pant, set to be the costliest buy at the auction with a team like Punjab Kings aiming to go the distance with Rs 110.50 crore in its kitty, the other big names include IPL winning captain Shreyas Iyer, India's most prolific T20I bowler Arshdeep Singh, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal and Avesh Khan.
There are 81 players in the top bracket while 27 are in Rs 1.5 crore category. There are 18 in the Rs 1.25 crore category while 23 have priced themselves at Rs 1 crore.
