IPL teams can retain five players for Rs 39 crore

NEW DELHI: The Indian Premier League (IPL) has come up with a proposal to allow all teams to retain a maximum of five players for three years from 2014. The rest of the players will go into the auction pool. The salaries of these top five players have been fixed. The top player in this band of select five will draw a salary of Rs 12.5 crore a year for three years.

This is a decent hike as M S Dhoni, skipper of Chennai Super Kings and their highestpaid player, was paid some Rs 8.6 crore per year ($1.8 million at Rs 48 a dollar) in his last contract. According to the proposal, the second in this list of five will be paid Rs 10.5 crore while the third will get Rs 7 crore.

The fourth and fifth players of the teams will make Rs 5 and 4 crore, respectively. If any team retains all its top five players, a sum of Rs 39 crore would be deducted from the initial purse of Rs 60 crore.

‘Joker’s card’ can help IPL teams retain more players

If a team retains five cricketers, it will be left with a budget of just Rs 21 crore to spend to form the rest of the squad. This could deter teams from retaining the permitted number of players.

Earlier, the franchises had to shell out at least 50% of their purse if they retained four cricketers (total purse was Rs 43 crore in 2011). But now the teams will have to shell out 65% of their purse to retain five cricketers.

In order to bring in more transparency, the board has reduced the total salary purse from Rs 63 crore (the total purse in 2013 was $13 million) to Rs 60 crore. Besides, to stop under-the-table deals, teams which do not retain any players will have to spend at least Rs 36 crore at the auction, failing which they would be fined.

Some teams have already expressed their reservations over these proposals but the final decision will rest with the IPL governing council, which is due to meet shortly.

The board has also floated a proposal of retaining another three players through a system called ‘joker’s card’. If a team wants to retain more than five cricketers, they can use this card. For example, if a team is unable to fit a player into its top-five bracket, he would be put up for auction. Whichever team bids highest for this cricketer will give the original employer the first right of refusal. If that team wants to retain this cricketer as its sixth player, the bid amount would be deducted from the team’s purse.

In the 2008 to 2010 contract, the BCCI had fixed the dollar rate for Indian cricketers at the rate of Rs 40. In 2011 when the contracts were renewed, the dollar rate was fixed at Rs 48. However, the IPL decided earlier this year to make all the transactions in Indian currency.