IPL: Franchises Divided Over Retentions, Impact Player - Check Which Team Wanted What

BCCI officials met franchise owners on Wednesday evening in Mumbai to discuss the way forward with retention policy, mega auction and impact player rule ahead of the upcoming IPL season. However, franchises were divided on their opinions over these issues. Some wanted less retentions, some more with some also demanding for scrapping the mega auctions altogether. Impact player rule also saw divided opinions.

Reports suggest that teams are likely to get at max five retentions with one Right To Match (RTM) card. The RTM card gives a franchise the opportunity to match the final bid of a player from their squad of the last season. BCCI will take a call on these matters soon.

Among the team owners or co-owners who attended the meeting were Shah Rukh Khan from Kolkata Knight Riders, Kavya Maran from Sunrisers Hyderabad, Ness Wadia from Punjab Kings, Sanjiv Goenka with his son Shashwat from Lucknow Super Giants, KK Grand and Parth Jindal from Delhi Capitals.

Manoj Badale and Ranjit Barthakur from Rajasthan Royals, Prathamesh Mishra from Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Kasi Viswanathan and Rupa Gurunath from Chennai Super Kings, Amit Soni from Gujarat Titans while Mumbai Indians' owners attended it online

Reports also emerged stating that KKR co-owner Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh and Punjab Kings co-owner Ness Wadia engaged in a heated discussion over mega auctions.

'No Outcome'

Delhi Capitals' Parth Jindal said that the meeting could not produce any outcome as teams stuck to their demands.

"No real outcome. It was just to hear all the different perspectives from all the owners and the BCCI has heard us and now they will give us all the rules. Hopefully, by the end of August we will get to know the rules for the next cycle," Jindal told the reporters at the BCCI headquarters.

Jindal also said that there were some teams which demanded scrapping mega auction altogether.

Punjab Kings' Wadia hoped the decisions will be taken in favour of "all stakeholders" while adding that the matter of overseas players' availability was also discussed.

"We discussed several points, auctions, players, uncapped players. It was a good meeting, happy to be having a discussion with the BCCI and whatever will be done will be in favour of the fans, players and all the stakeholders," Wadia told the media.

View On Impact Player

Jindal said franchises were split on the Impact Player rule as well.

"Impact player rule, again, (there were) different views from different people. Some people want it because it gives a chance to young players to play in the IPL. Some people don't want it because it is detrimental to Indian cricket in terms of the development of all-rounders so it's a mixed bag," he said.

"I'm in the second camp. I don't want it. I prefer the game as it is — 11 versus 11. I think all-rounders are very important. You have different players who don't bowl in the IPL or don't bat in the IPL because of this rule, which is not good for Indian cricket," Jindal said.

Retentions Without Overseas Bar

Sunrisers Hyderabad's Kavya Maran, as per a report in ESPNCricinfo, wanted as many as seven retentions that too without a bar on overseas players.

SRH, who finished as runner-up in the 2024 edition, had a quality set of foreign players with skipper Pat Cummins, Heinrich Klaasen, Travis Head all having good seasons. In past auctions, there has been a limit on the number of overseas players a franchise can retain.

Maran also wanted the players who pull out of IPL after being purchased to be banned. The SRH owner also suggested that instead of retention slabs there should be a retention pot.

"The money deducted from the overall salary cap for pre-auction retentions must be an overall pot based on number of players retained, and should not be individual amounts for first retention, second retention and so on," she told Cricbuzz.

"The franchise should have the discretion of how they split the amount among the retained players. This will prevent situations of conflict where players feel that they are of the same calibre but one player gets a higher amount, while the other lower based on pre-assigned brackets. This will also eliminate the potential of off-contract payments."

ESPNCricinfo report also said that KKR suggested an interesting idea of every franchise having eight RTMs and no retentions.

BCCI will take a final call on the matter soon.