The fourteenth season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is set to be played in April-May in India with a mini-auction slated to take place on February 18.
Ahead of the auction, the eight franchises have announced a list of retained and released players with some interesting takeaways.
The biggest surprise was the release of Rajasthan Royals (RR) captain Steve Smith, who struggled to perform with the bat in IPL 2020.
Like RR, Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) also let go their big overseas players while building on a core unit of domestic players for the T20 extravaganza.
A total of 57 players were released by the eight franchises in the 2021 IPL Retention on Wednesday. These include some big names like Smith, Jason Roy, Harbhajan Singh, Glenn Maxwell, Chris Morris and Aaron Finch among others.
The next step for IPL franchises will be to ink on players they want to buy at the mini-auction.
The COVID-19 protocols will of course play a big role in deciding the venue of the event and the BCCI has a big challenge to organize the marquee event. The IPL 2021 auction will also have a live telecast on Star Sports India.
| Team | No. of slots | No. of over seas slots | Total money spent (Rs.) | Salary cap avbl. (Rs.) | Avbl. slots | Over seas slots |
| CSK | 18 | 7 | 62.10 | 22.90 | 7 | 1 |
| DC | 19 | 6 | 72.09 | 12.90 | 6 | 2 |
| KXIP | 16 | 3 | 31.80 | 53.20 | 9 | 5 |
| KKR | 17 | 6 | 74.25 | 10.75 | 8 | 2 |
| MI | 18 | 4 | 69.65 | 15.35 | 7 | 4 |
| RR | 17 | 5 | 50.15 | 34.85 | 8 | 3 |
| RCB | 12 | 4 | 49.10 | 35.90 | 13 | 4 |
| SRH | 22 | 7 | 74.25 | 10.75 | 3 | 1 |
| Total | 139 | 42 | 483.3 | 196.6 | 61 | 22 |
