IPL Auction: Green, Venkatesh, Livingstone get KKR, CSK bids

Cameron Green could well be the biggest beneficiary of IPL’s skewed demand-supply market dynamic surrounding seam-bowling all-rounders during the mini-auction on Tuesday with Kolkata Knight Riders and Chennai Super Kings seemingly ready to break the bank for the Australian.

The 10 teams need to fill up 77 slots with a cumulative purse of `237.55 crore and among them, Mumbai Indians (`2.75 crore) will hardly have any role to play save picking a few uncapped players at their base price.

Green, along with out-of-favour India all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer and English dasher Liam Livingstone, is likely to enjoy a handsome payday. Kolkata Knight Riders, with a purse of 64.30 crore and an eye on rebuilding the outfit with 13 slots to fill, can only be challenged by Chennai Super Kings, who enter the mini-auction with a purse of `43.40 crore.

The mini-auction is always more intriguing than the mega auction as franchises come with specific choices and are always ready to go the distance to procure the services of players with distinct skill-sets. Pace bowling all-rounders always come at a premium and therefore, the troika of Green, Venkatesh Iyer and West Indies’ Jason Holder, all coming at the highest base price of `2 crore ($220,000), are set to headline the bidding war.

If one looks at their IPL stats, Green, especially, has middling numbers — 704 runs and 16 wickets in the 29 matches — but the mini-auction is more demand-driven activity and an Australian all-format regular is certain to get traction.

When it comes to Venkatesh, everyone save KKR CEO Venky Mysore, believed that an auction bid of `23.75 crore was way too high and the player had his worst season trying to justify the price. Having also released Andre Russell, who is the team’s new “Power Coach”, KKR are in need of at least two good top order batters and one all-rounder. The third of three pace-bowling all-rounders, Holder, may be a low key name but he is equally adept at using the long handle and bowl those heavy balls, making him useful in a smaller auction with lesser options.

There is buzz that Green might surpass countryman Mitchell Starc (`24.75 crore) to become the overseas player with the highest price tag at an IPL auction but there would still remain a catch. Even if Green’s bid goes northwards of `25 crore, his salary for the season would still be `18 crore ($ 1.9 million).

The bid amount and players’ salary would be mutually exclusive with the former being deducted from team’s annual player purse. The reason being IPL’s “maximum-fee” rule which states that a foreign player’s maximum fee at a mini auction will be the lower value between the highest retention slab (`18 crore) and the highest price at the previous mega auction (`27 crore for Rishabh Pant in 2025).

In case of Venkatesh, it will be interesting if his bid value goes over and above `10 crore ($1.1 million), which is a fair deal given his skill-set and capabilities. In a mini-auction, there is no scope for using the Right To Match (RTM) card and hence KKR, if they want to get back Venkatesh, will have to make some smart calls.

England swashbuckler Liam Livingstone, who can also bowl handy spin is another player, who can hit the million dollar mark (`9 crore) along with Quinton de Kock, who has time and again shown that he is a match-winner with the bat aside from being safe as a house behind the stumps.

For Livingstone, destroying Rashid Khan’s mystery by smashing him for 26 runs in a ‘Hundred’ game for Birmingham Phoenix is likely to make him sought-after name.

Uncapped Indians Prashant Veer, and Mukul Choudhary will attract bidders while Prithvi Shaw and Sarfaraz Khan would also hope that their low base price of Rs 75 lakh finds takers.

Matheesha Pathirana was released by CSK but teams like Lucknow Super Giants (purse of Rs 22.95 crore) might bid aggressively as their fast bowling resources look depleted despite the presence of Mohammed Shami and a perennially injured Mayank Yadav. However, Pathirana is believed to have remodelled his action but whether CSK will be interested in him is a big question.

Also on the list is Jacob Duffy, the New Zealand paceman who has already made a name for himself in the T20I circuit and is one of the top-rated players in the ICC rankings. Among uncapped Indians, Ashok Sharma, who has previously been a part of IPL teams and is in the midst of a fine Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy campaign, is expected to attract very good bids.