Module 02 · Building

The auction and squad building

The auction is the part of franchise cricket that looks least like cricket and explains the most about it. This module teaches the vocabulary first, then the sequence of a bidding round, then the constraints that make a squad either balanced or brittle.

1. What the auction is for

Franchise squads are not permanent. Instead of transferring players between clubs whenever they choose, the league periodically pools available players and allocates them through an open auction, with each team spending from a capped budget. The purpose is competitive balance: no side can simply outspend the rest without limit, and every side faces the same trade-off between one expensive player and three useful ones.

Two broad kinds of auction have become familiar. A larger auction, held after a longer interval, resets most squads at once. A smaller top-up auction between those resets lets teams fill specific gaps. The difference matters because it changes the goal: a full reset is about building a structure, while a top-up is about patching a known weakness.

2. The vocabulary, defined once

Purse

The total budget a team may spend on its squad, set by the organisers and identical for every team. Purses are quoted in crore — one crore is ten million rupees, and one lakh is one hundred thousand.

Base price

The minimum amount a team must bid to enter the contest for a player. Players are grouped into base-price bands, and a player can be sold for the base price if only one team bids.

Capped and uncapped

A capped player has appeared in senior international cricket for a national side. An uncapped player has not. The distinction affects how players are grouped, and it is the reason domestic performers in the Ranji Trophy or the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy can be picked up cheaply relative to their impact.

Retention

Keeping a player from the previous squad before the auction opens, with an agreed value deducted from the purse. Retentions buy continuity but reduce flexibility.

Right to match

A mechanism, available where the rules allow it, by which a player's previous team can match the winning bid and keep the player. It gives incumbency some value without freezing the market.

Accelerated round

A faster round late in the auction in which teams nominate the remaining players they still want, so the process does not stall on names nobody is bidding for.

Unsold

A player who attracted no bid in a round. Unsold does not mean unwanted; it often means the fit was wrong for the teams with money left.

3. How a bidding round actually unfolds

1. The player is announced with a base price and a role. Role labels are broad: opener, middle-order batter, wicketkeeper-batter, seam-bowling all-rounder, spin-bowling all-rounder, fast bowler, spinner.
2. Bidding opens at the base price. Teams signal, and the auctioneer raises the price in set increments that widen as the bidding climbs.
3. Two or three teams usually contest seriously. Everyone else is watching to see how much of a rival's purse is being consumed.
4. A right-to-match card may be used where permitted. The previous team can step in at the top bid, which is why a rival will sometimes push the price up past what it would pay itself.
5. The player is sold, or goes unsold and may return in a later round.
6. The purse and squad slots are recalculated. Every purchase tightens two constraints at once: money remaining and places remaining.

Watch the second constraint, not the first. Teams rarely run out of money before they run out of sensible slots. A side that has spent heavily on three players is not necessarily in trouble; a side that has spent evenly and still has no death-overs bowler is.

4. The constraints that shape every plan

The single most important structural rule is the overseas limit: a team may field no more than four overseas players in its eleven. That converts into a design principle. Seven places in the eleven must be filled by Indian players, so a squad with a weak Indian core cannot be rescued by imports, however good they are. This is why depth in Indian seam bowling, Indian finishers and Indian spin is prized so highly.

Other constraints work in the background. There are minimum and maximum squad sizes, a cap on how many overseas players a squad may hold in total, and rules about replacements when a player becomes unavailable. Those thresholds are set in the competition's regulations and are revised from time to time, so read them in the current documents on the official league site rather than assuming last year's numbers still apply.

Then there is the schedule itself. A T20 league is played in a compressed window with travel between cities, which means the useful squad is larger than the eleven. Cover for a specialist role — a second wicketkeeper, a third front-line spinner, a reserve opening batter — is not luxury, it is insurance.

5. A framework for judging a squad

Rather than asking "did they buy good players", ask these six questions in order. They are stated criteria, not scores, and you can apply them to any squad on any team sheet.

1. Can the side name a legal eleven with four overseas players and seven Indians in which nobody is out of position? If a specialist has to keep wicket or open out of necessity, the structure is thin.
2. Who bowls the closing overs, and who is the backup? Death bowling is the scarcest resource in T20 cricket. One option is a plan; two is a squad.
3. Who takes the pace off, and who bowls into the wind? Slower-ball skill and a willingness to bowl the harder end are both squad properties, not individual bonuses.
4. Is there spin that can attack in the middle overs, not merely contain? On surfaces that grip, a wicket-taking spinner changes the shape of an innings.
5. Does the batting have left-hand and right-hand combinations available? Mixed pairs disrupt bowlers' lines and field settings, particularly against finger spin.
6. What breaks if two players are unavailable? Name the two most load-bearing selections and describe the fallback. If you cannot, the squad is a first eleven with passengers.

6. Practice and checkpoints

Practice task: build a shadow squad on paper. Give yourself a notional budget in units rather than rupees — say one hundred units — and list the roles you must fill before you name a single player. Allocate units to roles first, then decide which roles you are willing to underspend on. Finally, write one sentence explaining what your squad would look like on a surface that grips and turns, and one on a surface where the ball skids on.

1. 01

   Define base price, purse and right to match without notes

   Use one sentence each, in plain language.

   RecallFocus

   ShortEffort
   Review section 2
2. 02

   Explain why the overseas limit raises the price of Indian all-rounders

   Work from the seven-and-four split in the eleven.

   AppliedFocus

   MediumEffort
   Review section 4
3. 03

   Apply the six questions to your shadow squad

   Write the honest answer to question six before you admire question one.

   AppliedFocus

   LongEffort
   Review section 5