Ganguly, Dravid, Kumble back in IPL auction pool

New Delhi:

After the third edition of the IPL, it was very clear that most of the owners wanted a big shake up in their teams.

Therefore, it did not come as a surprise that Shah Rukh Khan owned Kolkata Knight Riders decided to send all their players back into the auction pool and that included their skipper Sourav Ganguly, who earned just over Rs 4 crore a year in each of the first three seasons.

Apart from Ganguly, former skippers Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble, who played for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, have also been put back in the auction pool. The Challengers, however, will retain New Zealand batsman Ross Taylor.

Master batsman Sachin Tendulkar, however, is certain to be retained by the Mumbai Indians for a price tag of 1.8 million USD or 9 crore rupees, which is double of his previous IPL salary.

Indian skipper MS Dhoni, who will also have the base price same as Tendulkar, will also be retained by the Chennai Super Kings along with Suresh Raina.

Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh are some of the other cricketers who will be in the top bracket. According to reports, Sahara Pune Warriors are keen on having Yuvraj, while Delhi Daredevils will retain their dashing opener Virender Sehwag.

The second bracket is that of Rs 1.3 crore where Twenty20 specialist Yusuf Pathan finds a place alongside Zaheer Khan and Raina.

Similarly, Gautam Gambhir, who did not have a great IPL 2 and 3, has been placed in the third bracket at Rs 92 lakh along with the likes of Virat Kohli, Irfan Pathan, Robin Uthappa, Ashish Nehra, Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar and veterans such as Ganguly, Kumble, Dravid and Laxman.

The fourth bracket is of Rs 46 lakh which consists of domestic cricketers and the fringe India players who have represented the country since 2005.

Bengal players Wriddhiman Saha, Manoj Tiwary, Ashok Dinda along with Saurashtra's Cheteshwar Pujara are some of the players in the fourth bracket.

The fifth and final bracket is of Rs 23 lakh where there are India discards such as Manpreet Gony, Sudeep Tyagi, Sridharan Sriram to name a few.

The five brackets of base price:

1st: Rs 1.84 crore;

2nd: Rs 1.3 crore;

3rd: Rs 92 lakh;

4th: Rs 46 lakh;

5th: Rs 23 lakh

List of Players Up for auction (In alphabetical order)

Andhra: Yelakka Venugopal Rao;

Assam: Sridharan Sriram

Baroda: Yusuf Pathan, Irfan Pathan, Ambati Rayudu, Munaf Patel;

Bengal: Sourav Ganguly, Manoj Tiwary, Wriddhiman Saha, Ashok Dinda;

Delhi: Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Ashish Nehra, Ishant Sharma

Gujarat: Parthiv Patel, Siddharth Trivedi

Haryana: Joginder Sharma, Amit Mishra

Hyderabad: VVS Laxman, T Suman, Pragyan Ojha

Jharkhand: Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Saurabh Tiwary

Karnataka: Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, Manish Pandey, Abhimanyu Mithun, R Vinay Kumar, Robin Uthappa

Kerala: S Sreesanth

Mumbai: Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, Wasim Jaffer, Abhishek Raut, Rohit Sharma, Abhishek Nayar, Ramesh Powar Madhya Pradesh: Naman Ojha Punjab: Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Manpreet Gony, VRV Singh Railways: Murali Kartik Rajasthan: Pankaj Singh Saurahstra: Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara Tamil Nadu: Dinesh Karthik, S Badrinath, R Sathish, R Ashwin, M Vijay, L Balaji Uttar Pradesh: Mohammed Kaif, Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar, Sudeep Tyagi, Piyush Chawla, Rudra Pratap Singh Vidarbha: Umesh Yadav.

(With PTI inputs)