While most of the Indian cricket family is preparing for the upcoming IPL Auction on 12 and 13 February, some of the World Cup winning U-19 cricketers though will not be part of the big pay day.
8 players will have to wait a little longer to feature in the IPL Auction pool because they don’t meet the BCCI criteria, which says that the U-19 player has to have played at least one first-class match or List A game, and if that isn’t the case then they’d have to turn 19 before the Auction to be eligible, the Indian Express reported.
The rule will see the likes of Dinesh Bana, India’s under-19 vice-captain, batsman Shaik Rasheed, left-arm pacer Ravi Kumar, all-rounders Nishant Sindhu and Siddarth Yadav, opener Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Manav Parakh and Garv Sangwan affected.
Among them Rasheed, Bana, Kumar and Sindhu played a big role in the team’s title winning campaign in the Caribbean.
The BCCI is yet to take a final call on the matter especially since domestic cricket has been affected quite badly in the last couple of years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This season, the Ranji Trophy will begin on 17 February, which means U-19 players cannot get the required one game in before the auction.
Before the World Cup, when the BCCI had conducted domestic cricket for the seniors and the U-19 tournaments, the players could not link up with their state squads because they were away with the Indian team and prepping for the showpiece event.
The IPL 2022 Player Auction pool has a total of 590 cricketers, set to go under the hammer during the two-day event in Bengaluru. Amongst the players registered for the auction are 228 capped players, 355 uncapped ones and seven from Associate Nations.
Veteran BCCI administrator Ratnakar Shetty has urged the BCCI to consider the situation as an exception and hopes the players will not miss out on the auctions.
(With Indian Express inputs)
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