S Sreesanth eyes return in IPL, sets base price of Rs 50 lakh for upcoming auctions

After Lucknow and Ahmedabad picked their respective players, the Indian Premier League (IPL) on Saturday (January 22) released the much-awaited list for the IPL 2022 mega auction and one name which caught everyone’s attention was of former India and Kerala pacer S Sreesanth.

Notably, Sreesanth last represented Rajasthan Royals in the IPL back in 2013 after which he was banned for life by the BCCI in September 2013 for his alleged involvement in the spot-fixing scandal.

However, the ban was reduced to seven years by a BCCI Ombudsman in 2019, and the pacer was cleared to return to professional Cricket by September 2020.

It is worth mentioning that, Sreesanth had registered for IPL 2021 auction too, but he failed to make the cut in the final list and now the Keralite speedster has once again registered for the auction with a base price of Rs 50 lakh, as per ESPNcricinfo.

Before getting banned, Sreesanth had played total of 44 IPL matches for three franchises – Rajasthan Royals, Kochi Tuskers Kerala, and Kings XI Punjab, and he bagged total of 44 wickets.

Interestingly, Sreesanth recently played in the Vijay Hazare Trophy during the 2020/21 season where he picked up a total of 13 wickets in 6 innings at an average of 24.38 for Kerala.

1214 players register for IPL 2022 auction

Total of 1214 players have registered for the upcoming IPL 2022 auction, which is set to take place on February 12 and 13 in Bengaluru. The list includes 896 Indians and 318 overseas players.

“The players’ list incorporates 270 capped, 903 uncapped, and 41 Associate players,” an IPL release read on Saturday.

Notably, some big names in international cricket — Ben Stokes, Chris Gayle, Jofra Archer, Joe Root, Mitchell Starc, Chris Woakes and Sam Curran and a few other foreign players have decided to skip the IPL 2022 and subsequently didn’t enroll for the mega-auction.

Here is the list for the top 3 brackets:

INR 2 crore bracket

R Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Deepak Chahar, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Shami, Devdutt Padikkal, Krunal Pandya, Harshal Patel, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Shardul Thakur, Robin Uthappa, Umesh Yadav, Dinesh Karthik, Ishan Kishan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar

Mujeeb Zadran, Ashton Agar, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Marsh, Steve Smith, Matthew Wade, David Warner, Adam Zampa, Shakib Al Hasan, Mustafizur Rahman, Sam Billings, Saqib Mahmood, Chris Jordan, Craig Overton, Adil Rashid, Jason Roy, James Vince, David Willey, Mark Wood, Trent Boult, Lockie Ferguson, Quinton de Kock, Marchant de Lange, Faf du Plessis, Kagiso Rabada, Imran Tahir, Fabian Allen, Dwayne Bravo, Evin Lewis, Odean Smith.

INR 1.5 crore bracket

Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma, Washington Sundar, Aaron Finch, Chris Lynn, Nathan Lyon, Kane Richardson, Jonny Bairstow, Alex Hales, Eoin Morgan, Dawid Malan, Adam Milne, Colin Munro, Jimmy Neesham, Glenn Phillips, Tim Southee, Colin Ingram, Shimron Hetmyer, Jason Holder, Nicholas Pooran.

INR 1 crore bracket

Manish Pandey, Piyush Chawla, Prasidh Krishna, T Natarajan, Ajinkya Rahane, Nitish Rana, Wriddhiman Saha, Kedar Jadhav, Kuldeep Yadav, Jayant Yadav, Mohammad Nabi, James Faulkner, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, Riley Meredith, Josh Philippe, Liam Livingstone, Tymal Mills, Aiden Markram, Rilee Rossouw, Tabraiz Shamsi, Rassie van der Dussen, Wanindu Hasaranga, Roston Chase, Sherfane Rutherford, D’arcy Short, Andrew Tye, Dan Lawrence, Ollie Pope, Devon Conway, Colin de Grandhomme, Mitchell Santner.