The IPL (Indian Premier League) Governing Council announced the retention rules ahead of IPL 2025 on Saturday. Each team have until 5 PM IST on October 31, 2024 to submit their full lists with the mega auction reportedly taking place towards the end of November. While each team can retain a maximum of 6 players, one of them need to be an uncapped star if they decided to use all the retentions. However, there is another rule in play in case of uncapped cricketers.

“It may be noted that for retention purposes, any player who gets capped on or before October 31, 2024, will be considered a capped player,” the BCCI official release read.

As a result, the trio of Mayank Yadav, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Harshit Rana can longer be considered as uncapped stars by their franchises if they make their debut in the T20I series against Bangladesh. The three cricketers were included in the squad and there is a chance that the team can opt for young talents to test their bench strength in this three- match series.

 The 10 IPL franchises will be allowed to retain a maximum of six players from their previous squads, including usage Right To Match (RTM) card at the auction that will cost Rs 75 crore out of an enhanced team purse of Rs 120 crore, the IPL governing council decided on Saturday.

In a significant move, the BCCI also decided that all those India players, who haven’t played any international game for at least five calendar years will deemed “uncapped players”, a move being seen to ensure that Chennai Super Kings can retain the peerless MS Dhoni, who last played for the country in the 2019 ODI World Cup semifinal.

It is learnt that for an uncapped player, the retention cost will be Rs 4 crore and hence CSK even if they retain Dhoni, can surely save a lot for the auction.

A team was allowed up to four retentions in the last mega auction held in 2022.

On the day, BCCI secretary Jay Shah also announced a fixed match fee of Rs 7.50 lakh for all players selected to play the league games with an additional 1.05 crore income over and above their salaries.

A fixed salary purse of Rs 12.60 crore in addition to the auction cum retention purse of Rs 120 crore will have to be kept by the franchises for next season.

(With PTI inputs)