Former England fast bowler James Anderson has registered for the IPL 2025 mega auction. At 42 years old, Anderson is looking forward to his first IPL season, having never previously played in the league. He has also not participated in any other major T20 leagues around the world.
So far, Anderson has only played in England’s T20 Blast League. Now, he appears keen to join a T20 league outside of England. According to reports, Anderson has set his base price for the IPL auction at ₹1.25 crore. It will be interesting to see which team bids on him in the upcoming auction.
Meanwhile, England’s star all-rounder Ben Stokes was notably absent from the list of registered players. Stokes had opted out of IPL 2024 and played only a few matches for Chennai Super Kings in IPL 2023.
Several Indian players, including Khaleel Ahmed, Deepak Chahar, Venkatesh Iyer, Avesh Khan, Ishan Kishan, Mukesh Kumar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Prasidh Krishna, T Natarajan, Devdutt Padikkal, Krunal Pandya, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, and Umesh Yadav, have registered with a base price of ₹2 crore.
Played last T20 match 10 years ago
Interestingly, Anderson played the last T20 match of his career about 10 years ago when he last took part in the World Blast in 2014. In such a situation, this question becomes more interesting who will buy the 42-year-old fast bowler Who played the last T20 match 10 years ago? The answer to this question will be found only in the auction.
Said goodbye to international cricket this year
Anderson was playing only Test cricket for England for the last several years. He ended his international career by playing his last match at Lord’s against West Indies in July 2024. After leaving international cricket, Anderson was seen as a mentor in the England camp.
Anderson T20 career at a glance
Anderson has played 44 matches in his T20 career so far. Bowling in 44 innings of these matches, he took 41 wickets at an average of 32.14, in which his best figure was 3/23. Anderson conceded runs at an economy of 8.47 during this period. Apart from this, he also scored 23 runs while batting in 10 innings.
In an interview yesterday, James Anderson expressed his interest in the shorter formats, saying, “There’s definitely a bit of intrigue with the shorter formats because I’ve not played any franchise stuff before. Watching The Hundred this year, and seeing the ball swing around, it makes me feel like I could do a job there. I know it’s a while since I played it and my age will get brought up again, but I really feel I’ll be good enough to play that form of cricket.”
Now, it’s interesting to see which IPL franchise might take a chance on this 42-year-old pacer.