The new Indian Premier League (IPL) Player Regulations for the period 2025-27 were announced by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Saturday after a meeting of the IPL Governing Council (GC), and the mention of “will get banned” in the press release draws attention.
Called the ‘Big Auction’, the regulations require all overseas players to register for it. In case a foreign player doesn’t do that, “then he will be ineligible to register in the following year’s player auction.”
But in the next instruction on the eight-point list of the regulations, the BCCI cautioned players who decide to register themselves, get picked by a franchise and then opt out of the season.
“Any player who registers in the player auction and after getting picked at the auction makes himself unavailable before the start of the season, will get banned from participating in the tournament and player auction for 2 Seasons.”
The ‘Big Auction’ is expected to be held in the second half of November at an overseas location, most likely in the Gulf.
Among the most awaited part of the regulations was the number of players a franchise will be allowed to retain.
The IPL GC ended that wait by declaring that “the IPL franchises can retain a total of 6 players from their existing squad. This can be either via retention or by using the Right to Match (RTM) option.”
The press release further stated, “It is at the discretion of the IPL franchise to choose their combination for Retentions and RTMs. The 6 retentions / RTM’s can have a maximum of 5 capped players (Indian & Overseas) and a maximum of 2 uncapped players.”
The regulations made it clear that a capped Indian player will be considered uncapped “if the player has in the last five calendar years preceding the year in which the relevant Season is held, not played in the starting XI in International Cricket (Test match, ODI, Twenty20 International) or does not have a Central Contract with BCCI.”
