All 10 IPL franchises have announced the names of their retained players for the mega player auction to be held before this season. All the fans were eagerly waiting for it, in which many shocking decisions have also been seen. Mumbai Indians have retained a total of 5 players, in which the name of Ishan Kishan is not included, who was a very important part of the franchise in the past. Ishan will be part of the mega player auction. Though, Mumbai Indians can’t include him into the squad through RTM. Because, BCCI has already stated that only 6 players can be retain form previous year’s squad.
Ishan Kishan, one of the talented wicketkeeper-batsmen in India, has not had a good time for a few months. BCCI, which put his name outside the central contract, advised him to focus on domestic cricket. Ishan is now playing domestic cricket to regain his spot in the national team. Now it is seen that after BCCI, the Mumbai base franchise also does not prioritise the 26-year-old cricketer.
Mumbai Indians have retained five players including Jasprit Bumrah (Rs 18 crore), Suryakumar Yadav (Rs 16.35 crore), Hardik Pandya (Rs 16.35 crore), Rohit Sharma (Rs 16.30 crore) and Tilak Verma (Rs 8 crore). Mumbai Indians have not retained Ishan Kishan only among the big names of international players of the Indian team in their team. In the mega player auction, Mumbai Indians will have the option of using the RTM card but they will not be able to use it with Ishan Kishan. The biggest reason behind this is the rules issued by the IPL Governing Council regarding player retention.
In fact, a team could retain a maximum of 6 players before the mega auction, including the Right to Match card. However, out of these 6 players, only 5 capped players could be retained and a maximum of 2 uncapped players. Now that Mumbai Indians have already retained 5 capped players, they will not have the option of using the RTM card to include Ishan Kishan again in their team at the time of auction. However, Mumbai can use this RTM for any of their uncapped players, in which Anshul Kamboj and Nehal Wadhera can be a better option for them.
Before the IPL mega player auction, Mumbai Indians spent a total of Rs 75 crore from their purse of Rs 120 crore to retain 5 players. In such a situation, they has only Rs 45 crore left to make the rest of the team at the time of auction. Due to this, it is not going to be an easy task for them to include more big players in their team.