Why did Cheteshwar Pujara and Hanuma Vihari not register their names for IPL 2023 auction?
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Cheteshwar Pujara and Hanuma Vihari
Test specialists Cheteshwar Pujara and Hanuma Vihari have skipped the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 mini-auction. The event is slated to take place on December 23 in Kochi and a total of 991 players have signed up for the auction.
As Pujara and Vihari went unsold in IPL 2022, the former was signed up for the base price of 50 lakhs by the Chennai Super Kings in IPL 2021, but he didn’t play a single game. Pujara has also been a part of Kolkata Knight Riders, Royal Challengers Bangalore, and Punjab Kings but the last match he played was in 2014. Vihari played his last IPL game back in 2019.
Tired of not being picked up by the franchises, both players decided to not go for the auction. As this will be a mini-auction, the franchises have a limited budget, so Pujara and Vihari know their chances of being purchased is very less.
“Since this is a mini-auction, both Pujara and Vihari knew that teams will have a limited budget. So, both sensibly decided to give this auction a miss,” said a source tracking the developments. “This list will be pruned to half-say about 450-odd players, by December 9- the deadline for preparing the shortlist. Expect around 200 players to go under the hammer, eventually,” added the source.
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Auction to have a virtual angle
The source further said that all the support staff won’t to able to travel to Kochi so the board can allow them to participate in the mini-auction virtually also. “Almost all the franchises have foreign coaches or members of support staff. Everyone won’t be able to travel to Kochi. The Board is likely to allow the team’s support staff to participating in the auction virtually,” the source added.
Meanwhile, the 10 teams have retained and released their players ahead of the auction. A total of 163 players were retained by the franchises, whereas 85 players were released.
Amongst the 991 registered players, 277 are overseas, and 714 are Indians. 185 players are capped, whereas 786 players are uncapped and 20 are from Associate Nations.
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Gouri Das
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