Dubai, October 28: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has finally formalised the retention rules for the franchises ahead of the upcoming IPL 2022 Auction.

With two new franchises being added to the cash-rich league from the upcoming IPL 2022 season which takes the number of teams to ten, there had been a lot of confusion over the format of the auction for the fifteenth edition of the tournament.

As per an ESPNCricinfo report, the IPL Governing Council has reportedly finalised the retention rules for the auctions.

New Retention Rules

As reported earlier, the BCCI has stuck to the previous retention rules and will be allowing all the existing eight franchises to retain four players from their current squad, while the rest of the players will go into the auction pool.

It is now being reported that there will be two different combinations that the teams can apply while retaining players.

The eight existing franchises can retain three Indians and one overseas player, or two Indians and two overseas.

NO RTMs

Also, the BCCI has decided to do away with the right-to-match cards (RTM) at the auction which was one of the salient features during the previous mega auction that was held ahead of the IPL 2018 season.

This means, no team can use the right-to-match cards during the bidding process and retain the services of the players who were released in the pool ahead of the auction. This move is aimed at giving balance to the teams.

Team Purse

The BCCI is going to allow the purse for IPL 2022 auction around Rs 90 crore (USD 12 million approx). In the IPL 2020 Auction, the purse was Rs 85 crore.

Retention Rules for 2 new teams

As for the new franchises i.e. Ahmedabad and Lucknow, three players going to them. The BCCI has specified a combination of two Indian players and one overseas player.

However, it is still unclear whether the players that the new franchises will pick will be strictly from the group of players not retained by the existing franchises, or can be from the larger auction pool - which will have new additions - ahead of the 2022 auction.

Big relief for CSK, MI:

The update comes as a major relief to at least two IPL sides, namely Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. Both the teams were eager to retain the services of some of their core players and the development gives them the freedom.

IPL 2021 winners CSK can now easily retain their captain, MS Dhoni, ahead of IPL 2022 and three other players whom they deem fit. Similarly for Mumbai Indians who would be looking to retain captain Rohit Sharma and star pacer Jasprit Bumrah for sure.