Inside the 'chaos' of the IPL auction: blacklisting, overnight millionaires, England's 'flaky' reputation and greedy owners controlling the biggest show in cricket

For Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi, the idea of an auction for the best cricket players in the world came from a British institution.

‘At the time, the Modi group owned the Sotheby’s in India, and I saw there was no ambiguity or negotiations with a middle man,’ Modi tells Mail Sport from his London home. ‘It was perfect because I wanted to provide fair value and entertainment.

‘And it became such a spectacle - keep in mind that when we did it in year one, there were no IPL fans, but India is a cricket-hungry country.’

Richard Madley, the original IPL auctioneer and also known for banging the gavel on Bargain Hunt, recalls how he was initially approached by Modi and the world’s biggest sports agency IMG to help outline the rules for auctions, then found himself on a plane to India to host it himself.

‘Nobody had a clue before the inaugural auction but February 20, 2008 was the day that cricket changed forever - people realised that my goodness, this is groundbreaking,’ Madley tells Mail Sport.

‘Lalit was convinced that it would change cricket. He dreamt big, he talked big and he meant it but I don’t think anybody - even him - realised it would get this big.’

Sixteen years ago Lalit Modi a league that would go on to become the world's second-most expensive sporting product

The Indian Premier League is one of the most lucrative franchises in the world (this year's winners, Kolkata Knight Riders, pictured)

The competition has taken hold of a cricket-mad nation and its annual sales attract similar high levels of attention

This coming Sunday and Monday, the auction for the 2025 IPL will take place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Twenty-three million people in India watched last year’s sales, and as players from across the globe await their golden ticket to the richest dance in the sport, this is the inside story of chaos, blacklisting and overnight millionaires.

Sixteen years on from Modi’s brainwave, the IPL is the second most lucrative sporting product in the world, with the broadcast value of each match a whopping £10.6million - a higher per-game figure than the Premier League gets from Sky Sports. Only the NFL can surpass that.

For a product synonymous with Bollywood culture, each fixture earns as much as a fairly successful Bollywood film.

‘The beauty of Modi is that he understood eyeballs on screen and even now, there are still people in suits in cricket who are living in the dark ages and don’t understand that,’ a former England player tells me.

‘Modi would look at a fixture and see all the opportunities for revenue, from sponsors on floodlights to strategic timeouts for extra advertising time. He transformed the game forever.’

For this year’s mega-auction, which is a ‘reset’ as franchises are allowed to only retain six players from last season, 1,575 players put their name forward - including a 42-year-old seamer by the name of James Anderson.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine were removed to create a shortlist of 576, battling for the remaining 204 slots across the 10 teams, with 70 of these available to overseas players.

Adding to the glamour are a raft of Bollywood stars - including Shah Rukh Khan, Kolkata Knight Riders' owner - involved in the league

One foreign star adding an unexpected sheen to upcoming proceedings is James Anderson

Each team can spend up to INR 120 crore (£11.3m) to spend on between 18-25 players, up six-fold from INR 20 crore (£1.9m) in 2008. It is a day that changes lives.

Harry Brook was celebrating his sister’s 18th birthday at a cafe in Ilkley when he became a millionaire, and only found out over Facetime with fellow England player Matthew Fisher that he had been signed for £1.3m by Sunrisers Hyderabad.

In similar fashion, Moeen Ali found out via ESPN Cricinfo that Royal Challengers Bangalore had signed him in 2018. Three years later, Chennai Super Kings paid £700,000 for his services - not bad for someone who once said he would have played in the IPL for free.

Liam Livingstone was following a live stream while on a bus to a game in the Pakistan Super League when Punjab Kings made him £1.1m richer in 2022, while Ben Stokes had to look up what a crore was when Rajasthan Royals gave him 12.5 of them (£1.37m) to play for their side in 2017.

As for Eoin Morgan, he once forgot the auction was even on as his future was being decided.

A 22-year-old Kieron Pollard was in an Adelaide apartment when he was the subject of a four-way tiebreak in 2010, with each franchise bidding the maximum $750,000 (£593,400). Madley held a ‘silent tiebreaker’ which Mumbai Indians won with a bid of $2.75m (£2.18m). Pollard went on to play for Mumbai for 13 seasons, still captains three of their sister teams in Cape Town, Abu Dhabi and New York and is also a batting coach for Mumbai.

In the same Adelaide apartment that day was Pakistan all-rounder Shahid Afridi, who would have been a steal at his base price of $250,000 (£198,000), but not one of the paddles went up.

In fact, no paddles went up for a Pakistani name that day. India’s decision to boycott their neighbours is steeped in politics and a glaring omission from the world’s most lucrative cricket league - no Pakistan players have played since the first edition.

Harry Brook was celebrating a birthday with his family when news broke that he had been purchased by Sunrisers Hyderabad

Kieron Pollard (pictured in 2011) had a similarly fairytale-like acceptance into the Mumbai Indians franchise

But Shahid Afridi - or any other Pakistani cricketer - would not expect the same reception at the IPL auction

That isn’t the only drawback. Away from the glitz and glamour, the talk about how ‘amateur’ the auction is remains.

‘It’s great theatre but there’s such a lack of professionalism,’ says one source who has worked in numerous auctions. ‘You can’t act rationally because it won’t work, it’s a vicious cycle.

2025 IPL AUCTION IN NUMBERS 1575 players registered 576 players shortlisted (367 Indian, 209 overseas) 204 spots available (134 Indian, 70 overseas) Advertisement

‘There are too many random decision-makers. The auction is chaos. There is so much at the whim of a handful of billionaire owners who think they rule cricket.

‘There’s this weird dynamic of a hugely successful league that is still amateur, in the sense that sponsors, owners and their friends and families all end up in the rooms where important cricket decisions are made.

‘Coaches bring in opinions, analysts bring in data and suddenly you’ll have someone saying “this player is finished” or “this player is a superstar”. Erratic is an understatement.’

Power runs through every corner of the auction, and often from above.

‘Occasionally you get a call (from an owner) saying this player has to play for us - but there’s also blacklisting,’ adds the source.

‘Tom Curran bowled a costly final over for Delhi one year and a year later, the owner wanted nothing to do with him even though he’d had a brilliant season. They had to take his name off the projection lists.

Memories are long in the IPL and a poor over for Delhi cost Tom Curran his spot in the roster

ENGLISH PLAYERS IN 2025 IPL AUCTION Jos Buttler, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook, Jonny Bairstow, Phil Salt, Sam Curran, Adil Rashid, Jofra Archer, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Ben Duckett, James Vince, Moeen Ali, Will Jacks, Tom Banton, Sam Billings, Jordan Cox, Gus Atkinson, Tom Curran, Ollie Pope, Richard Gleeson, Reece Topley, Luke Wood, Leus du Plooy, Michael Pepper, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Dan Mousley, Jamie Overton, Olly Stone, Dan Worrall, Matthew Potts, John Turner, Dan Lawrence, James Anderson, Chris Jordan, Tymal Mills, David Payne, Benny Howell Advertisement

‘And then there’s the paddle. In theory, it doesn’t matter who is lifting the paddle, but if you’ve got someone hot-headed then you’re f****d, as it turns into a d**k-swinging contest. If someone from the owner’s family wants to hold the paddle, you can’t say no.

‘At Sunrisers Hyderabad, the owners’ daughter holds the paddle. I’ve seen owners overrule coaches. At the last mega auction, one of the coaches was fuming because the owner refused to raise the paddle for the player that he wanted as his captain.

‘It's crazy and it’s like you’re in a TV show, with people who are Indian household names. If you’re not from India, you probably have no idea who they are and are just baffled by it all. Ultimately, it’s glamour over process.'

Dan Weston, a cricket consultant who has worked on IPL auctions, insists that it is ‘the best recruitment in sport’.

Weston, who produces a mammoth valuation tool ever season determining a player’s market value, chances of being sold and how volatile their price will be, says the preparation is thorough throughout the year.

But he also recalls his mind being blown when he saw a well-known coach frantically scrolling through the Cricinfo stats of a player mid-auction.

‘Mock auctions take place a couple of times before the real thing,’ says Weston. ‘A lot of it can be emotional decision-making and you try to predict which teams are going to go the extra mile but there’s always shocks.

‘For example, Mumbai going so heavy on Jofra Archer when he was injured was a shock, as none of the mock auctions had him down as a viable option.’

Archer, who took home £750,000 from Mumbai in 2022 despite being injured and eventually played just four times during his two-year deal, had decided not to enter the auction but U-turned this week.

Jofra Archer was still able to pick up a hefty paycheck despite having an injury-stricken run

But while Archer is back at the auction, former Chennai Super Kings player Ben Stokes is not

He will be one of 38 English players in the final list for 2025, though there is no Stokes, Jamie Smith, Joe Root or Mark Wood.

So to Saudi Arabia this weekend, and the show rolls on for Season 18. For Modi, now in exile in London after the BCCI suspended him in 2010 and then banned him in 2013 for 'indiscipline and misconduct' over alleged bid-rigging and money laundering, the thought of it in Saudi Arabia leaves a 'weird' taste but he understands why given bilateral relations and Saudi's own ambitions.

‘You’ve put me in a spot,’ he says, when Mail Sport asks whether he would ever hold the auction there. ‘I would only auction in a different country where I can genuinely expand my fan base. I doubt the Saudis will buy into it, so I would have taken it to Sydney or London.’

Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul, the three captains released by their franchises, will be among the 12 marquee players whose names will kick off the auction.

Jos Buttler and Livingstone are among the initial dozen, with no England players retained from last season. Last year, five English players - Wood, Gus Atkinson, Harry Brook, Jason Roy and David Willey - all withdrew after the auction because of a combination of personal reasons and the ECB managing player workloads.

‘English players are flaky and have a reputation of dropping out for insubstantial reasons,’ the analyst adds. ‘Every action has a reaction. If you put your name in the auction, you need to commit to playing the whole tournament.

‘There’s not a bias against them but there’s definitely a worry and it’s the same with Australians, because they’re the players that are wealthy enough so they don’t really need the IPL. Jason Roy was blacklisted for not turning up (in 2022).’

Heinrich Klaasen became the top retention at 23 crore (£1.9m) this year, compared to the approximate £120,000 that South African players on a central contract receive.

England's Jos Buttler is expected to draw a significant price at the auction this weekend

Other England stars who will be hotly bid for include Liam Livingstone (left) and Sam Curran

Although Modi has not been returned to India for some time, the league's founder wouldn't dream of missing the Jeddah-based auction

So which England players will be worth keeping an eye on?

‘Jos will go big,’ the analyst says. ‘Livingstone will go big and Sam Curran too. Harry Brook will probably go for less than he should and I think Jacob Bethell will get a contract.’

It’s not unusual for players to be informed pre-auction that teams will bid for them but often that is to ensure they’re fully available. ‘It’s a free market so why would you tip your hand,’ Weston argues.

Either way, as Madley articulates, it is the day where ‘fortunes are made and hearts are broken’.

‘It’s a show of wealth but often the surprises are with the uncapped players for whom even £50,000 can be life-changing,’ he says. ‘I love day two when an unknown Indian leg-spinner gets picked up.’

As the size of the purse increases, inevitably the prices rise. At the last mega auction in 2022, 551.7 crore (£51.8m) was spent. Come Sunday, the cricketing world will be eagerly tuning in. Will Modi join them?

‘Of course. It's my baby,’ says Modi, who refuses to return to India after death threats were made against him by gangsters trying to extort money. Mumbai police later confirmed mob boss Dawood Ibrahim had sent hitmen to try to kill Modi while he was on holiday with his family in Thailand.

'I get the same feeling that I had on day one. It’s still my baby,’ he says. ‘You can move me away from the game but I’m still part of it and that will never be taken away.’

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