IPL 2022 Mega Auction: CSK and KKR Retain Maximum Number of Players 

The eight IPL teams who contested the 2021 IPL have now finished deciding which players they’ve decided to retain ahead of the 2022 season. As we know, they will be joined by two new teams from Lucknow and Ahmedabad. There’s a lot of new opportunities for IPL betting going into 2022 and with the player retentions, the Mega Auction will be very interesting!

Retention rules in a nutshell

A reminder that IPL teams could retain a maximum of four players. No more than three Indian players and no more than two overseas players can be retained.

They could choose not to retain any at all (this didn’t happen with any side) and the more they retained, the more money would be taken from their purses ahead of the auction.

However, players could decide to not be retained by their current teams.

In this case, they’d opt to be in the auction. Rashid Khan (SRH), Shreyas Iyer (Delhi) and KL Rahul (Punjab Kings) were all examples of players who didn’t want to be retained.

However, the team they decided they didn’t want to be retained by can try and buy the player in the auction anyway.

If this were to happen, the player would have no choice but to play for the franchise they chose to leave. SRH have already vowed to try and buy Rashid Khan in the auction.

In terms of salaries, players get paid according to their previous salary and in what order their club retained them.

Full list of IPL retained players

Here’s a breakdown of the retained players for each of the current franchises

6/8 Skippers kept on

All of MS Dhoni (CSK), Rohit Sharma (Mumbai), Sanju Samson (Royals), Rishabh Pant (Delhi) and Kane Williamson (SRH) were retained players, having led their sides in 2021.

Virat Kohli (RCB) is a bit of a different case in that he gave up the captaincy at the end of the 2021 season.

RCB are yet to announce who will lead the team but it may be Glenn Maxwell, another of their retained players.

Williamson is a bit of an intriguing case in that SRH ended up rock bottom last term, though the Hyderabad management clearly believe he’s the man to lead the side going forward.

In his defence, he inherited the team as skipper from David Warner halfway through the season so it wasn’t all his fault.

And of course, Williamson did a great job in getting New Zealand to the 2021 T20 World Cup final.

Punjab skipper KL Rahul and Eoin Morgan (KKR) were the only 2021 skippers not kept on.

Mind you, that’s not quite true. KL Rahul, so often Punjab’s saviour but who has had to do a little too much at times, decided he wanted a fresh challenge and put himself in the auction.

2021 finalists retain as many players as possible

2021 finalists CSK and KKR were the only two teams to have kept as many players as possible.

After weeks of speculation regarding MS Dhoni’s future, we now know he’ll lead CSK for at least one more year now.

Ravindra Jadeja and IPL 2021 top run scorer Guturaj Gaikwad were obvious picks but Moeen Ali was perhaps a bit of a surprise.

Sure, he was excellent with both bat and ball this season but that hasn’t always been the case for him in the IPL.

As for KKR, they let Eoin Morgan go. His captaincy was good but ultimately, a lack of runs the past two seasons hurt his cause.

Instead, they kept on Indian duo Varun Chakravarthy and Venkatesh Iyer, who both had good seasons and are both ones for the future.

But the decision to keep on West Indies duo Sunil Narine and Andre Russell, two somewhat ageing and injury-prone players, albeit incredibly talented ones, might come back to haunt them.

At Delhi, It’s interesting they decided to retain Anrich Nortje rather than Kagiso Rabada in wh

at was a straight choice between the two.

Nortje’s brilliant economy rate these past two seasons just about swayed the vote.

Williamson stays, Rashid goes at SRH

And if Williamson was a somewhat obvious choice to be retained by SRH, youngsters Abdul Samad and Umran Malik were less so.

Samad had an extremely quiet season averaging just 12, so they’re showing a load of faith in him by thinking he will improve so much.

Umran Malik is a very different beast. He played just three matches at the end of the season, taking two wickets, but bowled some excellent spells with genuine pace. He could well be a future IPL star.

As mentioned already, Rashid Khan decided he’d rather go into the auction than stay at SRH.

It’s a big blow to SRH because he’s been by far their most important bowler over the past few seasons.

He’s taken 93 wickets in 76 matches for them, with an incredible economy rate of 6.33.

It seems Khan wanted to stay but as their first retained player, meaning he’d earn 15 Crore rather than the 11 Crore SRH were willing to pay as their second retained player.

That was still an increase of 2 Crore compared to last season. But they may still get him in the auction.

Only one of four English players retained by the Royals

It was also interesting that the only one of the four English players at Rajasthan who was retained was Jos Buttler.

There’s no real surprise in the fact that he retained- he’s mostly been excellent for them- it’s more than none of the other three were.

Jofra Archer was Player of the Tournament two years ago, Ben Stokes was at one stage the highest-paid player in the IPL and Liam Livingstone is one of the rising stars in the T20 game.

Including playing all matches for England at the recent World cup.

But Archer has been injured for the best part of a year, Stokes has fitness and mental health issues of his own and Livingstone just wasn’t fancied.

In addition to skipper Samson and Buttler, they only kept on young opener Yashasvi Jaiswal.