With stars like Rishabh Pant and K L Rahul up for grabs, many IPL team owners will be rubbing their hands in glad anticipation at the upcoming players' auction which promises to create all-time record deals given the available Indian talent in the pool.
Aside from Pant and Rahul, there will be Shreyas Iyer, Arshdeep Singh, Washington Sundar, Mohammed Siraj and Mohammed Shami also in the auction pool.
All of them can trigger bidding wars but let there be no confusion that Pant will be cynosure of all eyes at the two-day event supposed to be held in third week of December.
The Rs 75 crore retention cap on international players coupled with Right To Match cards will certainly make it an intriguing auction as some teams, which have exhausted their retention quotas, will now have to recruit at least 15 more players for a lesser sum.
But a few others like Punjab Kings (Rs 110.5 crore) and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (Rs 83 crore) will be making some insane bids.
Never before in an auction has one witnessed three IPL captains back in the pool -- Pant of Delhi Capitals, defending champions KKR's Iyer and Lucknow Super Giants' KL Rahul.
In case of Pant, more than money, he was not happy about his powers being curbed by GMR, the co-owners, who will run the show for the next two years. He was also, it is learnt, not happy with Hemang Badani as head coach and Y Venugopal Rao as Team Director.
Iyer felt that as an IPL-winning captain, he deserved way more than his Rs 12.25 crore existing salary, a belief that was not shared by the KKR bosses.
As for Rahul, his approach towards T20 cricket didn't match with what the LSG owners wanted.
All three will definitely get deals but Pant could well emerge as the highest paid player of Indian Premier League if Punjab Kings, known for breaking banks every two years while shopping for a new captain and 'X-factor', decide to go for him.
"Rishabh's real bidding will start from Rs 20 crore onwards. There will be three teams who can afford to bid big for him. One is Punjab Kings with Rs 110.5 crore in its kitty. They need a new captain and a brand. RCB has Rs 83 crore and LSG have Rs 69 crore and they also need a new captain," a top official of a franchise told PTI.
"Gujarat Titans don't need a captain but they also have Rs 69 crore. DC has Rs 73 crore but why would they go for someone, they released under acrimonious circumstances," he added.
While Suresh Raina might have raised hopes of CSK fans about Pant joining Dhoni but with Rs 55 crore, they can hardly even get to a ballpark figure and N Srinivasan's team doesn't function on whims and fancies.
Industry insiders expect Pant to get anything between Rs 25 crore to Rs 30 crore.
Now Iyer is another candidate who could have multiple franchises interested. When he was bought for Rs 12.25 crore by KKR, it was a mini auction, the dynamics are very different from mega auction
At the mini-auction, it is a case of more demand and less supply and hence one finds Mitchell Starc attracting an insane bid of Rs 24 crore plus. But in the mega auctions when a team needs a minimum of 15 to 18 players to build a squad, there isn't place for such extravagance.
"GMR, one of the co-owners have great faith in Iyer. He has been promised captaincy and if need be, DC with their handsome auction purse of nearly Rs 75 crore, can go north of Rs 20 crore.
"There won't be too many teams that would want Iyer the T20 batter but just to ensure DC spends a bomb on a player, they might engage in a bidding war for Iyer," another IPL franchise official said.
In case of Rahul, it might not be a big bidding war like his younger colleagues but he would be hurting if he doesn't attract a bid between Rs 10 crore to Rs 15 crore. RCB, where he started his IPL career, might go big for the local man and offer him the captaincy with Virat Kohli around to guide him.
Another couple of Indian youngsters, who can laugh their way to the bank, will be pacer Arshdeep, who has been released by Punjab Kings. He is after all, India's most prolific wicket-taker in T20Is with 87 scalps in 56 T20Is.
If Punjab go the distance for Pant, they might just use one of their four RTMs to keep Arshdeep if he is within the Rs 20 crore range.
Mumbai Indians will, however, have to be judicious after retaining the core for Rs 75 crore with only 45 crore to buy at least 15 players to make a squad of 20.
So, they won't be paying Rs 15 crore plus for Ishan Kishan like they did the last time but Kishan could well be LSG's second choice keeper if they can't get Pant.
In case MI don't get Kishan, then Nehal Wadhera could be their other RTM option.
Another player, who could gain handsomely, is Washington Sundar considering that he can bowl in Powerplay as well as middle overs and is looked at as a match-winning prospect.
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