Mayank, Vinay in spotlight

215 players to go under the hammer today

With all the players coming back to the common pool, team owners of the seven franchises will be aiming to strike a balance between the young and the experienced as the auction for the sixth edition of the Karnataka Premier League takes place here on Sunday.

For the first time since the league was revived in 2014, the concept of marquee players has been scrapped and a total of 215 players will go under the hammer in the fresh auction.

The players are divided into two pools –– Pool ‘A’  and Pool ‘B’. The high-profile players, a total of 35, are available from Pool ‘A’, including the likes of Manish Pandey, Karun Nair, Stuart Binny, CM Gautam, KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal and S Arvind, while 180 players registered with the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) are in Pool ‘B’.

T Pradeep, who attracted the joint highest bid of Rs 3.5 lakh with R Jonathan last time, is placed in Pool ‘A’ whereas veteran batsman Robin Uthappa, who has been granted the No Objection Certificate to play outside the State, has not been named in the list.

Each team will have a maximum purse of Rs 30 lakh, of which Rs 18 lakh will be reserved for Pool ‘A’ and the remaining Rs 12 lakh for Pool ‘B’ players. The minimum bid for a Pool ‘A’ player is Rs 50,000 while that for a Pool ‘B’ player is Rs 20,000.

The league is likely to kick start from September 1 and the international schedules of some of the top-drawer players will be kept in mind by the franchises when the bidding begins.

Rahul, who is a part of the Indian squad in the ongoing away Test series against Sri Lanka, will in all certainity be picked in the limited overs squad too, forcing the owners to ignore the stylish right-hander.

Manish Pandey, who is in blazing form for India ‘A’ in the ongoing triangular series involving South Africa and Afghanistan, could also return to the national side for the upcoming limited overs series’ against Sri Lanka and Australia.

The right-hander was initially named in the Champions Trophy squad but a side strain ruled him out of the competition.

Among the seasoned campaigners, attacking batsman Mayank Agarwal, all-rounders Shreyas Gopal and K Gowtham and the wily duo of S Arvind and Vinay Kumar will be in high demand. Among the young brigade, Prasidh Krishna, J Suchith, Pavan Deshpande, Mir Kaunain Abbas and David Mathias will be the players to watch out for.