IPL auction 2017: 5 potential biggest buys in the auction
The 2017 VIVO IPL auction that was supposed to take place in Bangalore on February 4 has been postponed to 20th of February due to the Supreme Court’s decision to remove Anurag Thakur and Ajay Shirke from their roles, and imposing various regulations on the other office bearers. With the auction a couple of weeks away, the franchisees would have figured out who their team needs ahead of the 2017 IPL.
All the eight teams have retained a combined total of 140 cricketers including 44 overseas players for the 2017 season. The 2017 IPL auction is set to feature over 750 players and out of those 750, a maximum of 76 cricketers can be picked by the teams. Each team can have a maximum of 27 players out of which 9 can be overseas professionals.
Extra Cover: IPL Auction 2017- Date, time, player list, rules and format
The franchisees have been allotted a purse of 66 crores INR for the auction. This purse includes the money spent by them in retaining the players and the remaining money can be used by the franchise in the auction. This year’s auction is set to feature a few big names and the franchise will have to outbid each other to land the player they want.
Let us take a look at the players who could be the most sought after players in the 2017 auction.
#5 Jason Roy
Jason Roy has been one of England’s best limited-over players at the moment and is likely to fetch a huge amount at the IPL auction. Roy has been phenomenal for the English in the last one year and transformed their ODI and T20I side. In the recently concluded ODI and T20I series against India, Roy gave his team a flying start in all the three ODIs and scored at least 50 runs in each of those matches. Even in the T20I series, he tried to do the same but lost his wicket against the run of play.
The Surrey batsman is one of the very few players with at least 1000 ODI runs to have an average of over 40 and strike-rate of over 100. His T20 numbers also look impressive, scoring 3412 runs in 134 innings at an average of 28 and a strike-rate of over 144.
Roy is a fearless opener and a perfect team player and always look to give his team a great start and doesn’t worry about losing his wicket in doing so. In spite of most of the teams having some good opening batsmen, the England opener is likely to fetch a big amount in the 2017 IPL auction. Mumbai Indians will look to buy the right-hander as they do not have an 'explosive' batsman to open the innings with skipper Rohit Sharma.