IPL Auction Day 1 Highlights: INR 27 crore man Pant, Shreyas and Venkatesh the headline makers on Day 1

IPL Auction LIVE: All right then, the second player is another fiery pacer who played for PBKS last season. RCB raised the paddle first for Rabada and GT raised it after that. RCB pull out at INR 4.80 crore after which MI join the battle at INR 5.25 crore. RCB return at INR 8.50 crore as GT pull out and MI eventually stop at INR 9.25 crore. GT back in it though, fight it out with RCB and finally have a winning bid at INR 10.75 crore. Sagar asks PBKS if they want to use the RTM and they firmly shake their heads. The South Africa pace superstar is going to Gujarat Titans.

IPL Auction LIVE: And thus ends the first bid of the year. SRH did eventually raise their bid to ₹18 crore after long deliberations. PBKS raise the RTM card again and that is that! Arshdeep is heading back to them. He has been pretty much the face of the Punjab Kings since he made his debut for them and so it was a bit of a surprise when they didn't retain him. Well, the star boy is going back home now.

IPL Auction LIVE: RR pull out after RR raises the cost to ₹12.50 crore but then there is a new bid from SRH. It remains between these two sides until the price reaches ₹15.75 crore at which point RR pull out. It seems that's the end of it but Punjab Kings have used the RTM card! SRH now deliberating whether they want to raise their bid now.

IPL Auction LIVE: CSK pulled out of the race DC raised the paddle for ₹7.50 crore. It is then between them and GT and the bidding goes up to ₹9.75 crore. DC pull out at that point but RCB then join in, raise it to ₹10.50 crore. GT remain in the bid but they are now facing off with RR.

IPL Auction LIVE: Allright the first player to come out of Set 1, picked by BCCI secretary Jay Shah. The bidding starts at ₹2 crore, Sagar has to wait for some time before the first bid comes from CSK. DC raise their paddle for ₹2.20 crore and off we go…

IPL Auction LIVE: “Let the bidding begin, let dreams fly,” says Dhumal in his speech. He runs through what is going to happen for the next two days and thanks the hosts Saud Arabia as well. Finally, he calls over the auctioneer Mallika Sagar. HERE WE GO!

IPL Auction LIVE: The mega-auction will start at 3.30pm IST (1pm local time), today and tomorrow. Today, the Marquee set of players will go under the hammer first and that process will go on till 5pm IST (2.30pm local time) before they head for a 45-minute lunch break. They will then resume at 5:45pm IST and go on till 10.30pm IST.

IPL Auction LIVE: All right then, everybody has taken their places at their respective franchise's table. Only a matter of time before the lights in that auction room starts dancing up and down. Set 1 of the marquee players go under the hammer first and those are:

Jos Buttler

Shreyas Iyer

Rishabh Pant

Kagiso Rabada

Arshdeep Singh

Mitch Starc

IPL Auction LIVE: Some more final updates from the BCCI. It has fleshed out what kind of increments will be happening over the course of the bidding process. It goes as follows:

Bids up to Rs. 1 Crore - increments of INR 5 lakh

Bids from Rs. 1 Crore up to Rs. 2 Crore - increments of INR 10 lakh

Bids from Rs. 2 Crore up to Rs. 3 Crore - increments of INR 20 lakh

Bids from Rs. 3 Crore - increments at the auctioneer's discretion, but not less than INR 20 lakh

IPL Auction LIVE: All right just over 10 minutes left now and so it is no surprise that all representatives of the franchises have made their way into the auction room. We have seen Rahul Dravid and a few others in pink shirts go in, the RR contingent. The Ambanis have also been spotted going in to represent Mumbai Indians' interests.

IPL Auction LIVE: We have explained this before but this is for the benefit of those who have just joined us, and it looks like there might be quite a few of you. A total of 574 players will be sold today and tomorrow. Out of these, 48 are capped Indians while 193 are overseas capped players. The number of players who had initially registered for the auction was 1574 and about 1000 players were cut out from the final list. A total of 366 players are Indian while 208 are from overseas. Only three players from associate nations have been named in the final list and this, interestingly, includes Unmukt Chand, a name some, or many, Indian fans would be familiar with. The 10 franchises retained 46 players in total prior to the auction. This means that, effectively, only 204 slots are required to be filled. Each franchise can have upto 25 players in their squad, of which not more than eight can be from overseas.

IPL Auction LIVE: All right we have confirmation that 84 players are set to go under the hammer today. It means that we will have some normal auctions tomorrow and not just accelarated bidding. As stated earlier, the players fro the Marquee Set will be up first. By extension, it will be Set 1 that is taken up to start off the auction and that consists of Jos Buttler, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, Kagiso Rabada, Arshdeep Singh, and Mitchell Starc.

IPL Auction LIVE: Those are the three big numbers. Everything else are just denominations from it. Just a reminder, the auction starts at 3.30pm IST. We can see on the broadcast that CSK's contingent led by head coach Stephen Fleming are making their way into the auction room.

IPL Auction LIVE: India's present and future have shone bright today. Yashasvi Jaiswal scored an imperious 161 off 297 balls and then Virat Kohli, at long last, scores a Test century. He had to race against time, India were waiting for him to get to the mark to declare and he got there with a sweep, of all shots, finishing unbeaten on 100 off 143 balls. India declare on 487/6 after being all out for 150 in the first innings and have set Australia a staggering target of 534 to win the first Test. What a turnaround.

IPL Auction LIVE: Ricky Ponting said on ESPNCricinfo that he was in conversation with a few teams after leaving DC. He said that it was "Project Punjab" that ultimately convinced him to join PBKS. "It is a team that hasn't had a lot of success over a long period of time, a team that's changed coaches a lot, so I saw it as a challenge. The other exciting part is that I saw some really exciting youngsters last year at Kings that hopefully we can attract back to the team for this season and put together a team that is going to be good enough to win the IPL. I mean, there's no doubting over the years that the Kings have had good players, have had good teams. They just haven't been able to win it yet. I have a longish-term deal there, and hopefully during that period of time we can win the IPL," he said.

IPL Auction LIVE: As stated earlier, the biggest of big names today are in the Marquee Set which will go on auction first and we will spend about 2 hours on it as well. Set 1 consists of Jos Buttler, Iyer, Kagiso Rabada, Rishabh Pant, Arshdeep Singh, and Mitchell Starc. KL Rahul, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Liam Livingstone, and David Miller are in Set 2.

IPL Auction LIVE: All right then, we are now getting closer and closer to the start. Among the interesting faces in those tables would be the new Rajasthan Royals coach Rahul Dravid and the new Punjab Kings coach Ricky Ponting. It is a return to the IPL and to RR for Dravid, he has captained and coached the team in the past. For Ponting, this is the third team that he is coaching after Mumbai Indians and Delhi Capitals.

IPL Auction LIVE: GT had a season to forget last year and yet, it was quite obvious who they were going to retain. Moreover, there have been no surprised trades from them before since then, unlike what was the case last season where their decision to trade Hardik Pandya with Mumbai Indians had a domino effect of repurcussions that some would argue are still panning out even now.

They retained captain Shubman Gill, Rashid Khan, Sai Sudharsan and Rahul Tewatia.

Full list of players not retained: David Miller, Matthew Wade, Wriddhiman Saha, Kane Williamson, Abhinav Manohar, Darshan Nalkande, Vijay Shankar, Jayant Yadav, Noor Ahmad, Sai Kishore, Joshua Little, Mohit Sharma, Azmatullah Omarzai, Umesh Yadav, Gurnoor Brar, Kartik Tyagi, Manav Suthar, Spencer Johnson, Sandeep Warrier, BR Sharath, Mohammed Shami, Robin Minz, Sushant Mishra.

IPL Auction LIVE: Heinrich Klaasen is the most expensive retention with SRH shelling out ₹23 crore for him. They pretty much retained the core of the side that redefined the idea of a high score in T20 cricket, with the other players they've kept being Travis head, Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, and captain Pat Cummins.

Full list of players not retained: Abdul Samad, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar, Glenn Phillips, Sanvir Singh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Agarwal, T. Natarajan, Anmolpreet Singh, Mayank Markande, Upendra Singh Yadav, Umran Malik, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Shahbaz Ahmed, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, Jaydev Unadkat, Akash Singh, Jhathavedh Subramanyan, Wanindu Hasaranga.

IPL Auction LIVE: In the end, it was an ugly divorce between Lucknow Super Giants and their first captain KL Rahul. Franchise owner Sanjeev Goenka even said that they retained players who play for the team. "It was a simple mindset to go in with players who have a mindset to win, who put the team first before their personal goals and personal aspirations and we wanted to retain as much as of core we could," said Sanjiv Goenka. Well.

These players who “have a mindset to win” are Nicholas Pooran, Mayank Yadav, Ayush Badoni, Mohsin Khan and Ravi Bishnoi.

Full list of players not retained: KL Rahul, Quinton de Kock, Kyle Mayers, Marcus Stoinis, Deepak Hooda, Devdutt Padikkal, Naveen-ul-Haq, Krunal Pandya, Yudhvir Singh, Prerak Mankad, Yash Thakur, Amit Mishra, Shamar Joseph, K. Gowtham, Arshin Kulkarni, M. Siddharth, Ashton Turner, Matt Henry, Mohd. Arshad Khan, Mark Wood, David Willey, Shivam Mavi.

IPL Auction LIVE: Well it's a strange one for KKR. Shreyas Iyer was their captain and he was quite brilliant in the way he led them to their first title in a decade. However, he was also not that great with the bat and really the only reason he was part of the playing eleven consistently was because he was captain. KKR retained veteran West Indies duo of Andre Russell and Sunil Narine along with Harshit Rana, Rinku Singh, Varun Chakravarthy and Ramandeep Singh.

Full list of players not retained: Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Phil Salt, Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Venkatesh Iyer, Vaibhav Arora, KS Bharat, Chetan Sakariya, Mitchell Starc, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Allah Ghazanfar, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Jason Roy, Gus Atkinson, Mujeeb Ur Rahman.

IPL Auction LIVE: Well Dwayne Bravo is quite clear on who he would like to get back. Any of his West Indies double world champion teammates or himself. Truth be told, that's not a bad shout at all.

IPL Auction LIVE: Another huge question was whether Rishabh Pant will be retained or not and well, they didn't. The players they retained instead were Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Tristan Stubbs and Abhishek Porel.

Full list of players not retained: Rishabh Pant, Pravin Dubey, David Warner, Vicky Ostwal, Prithvi Shaw, Anrich Nortje, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Lalit Yadav, Khaleel Ahmed, Mitchell Marsh, Ishant Sharma, Yash Dhull, Mukesh Kumar, Ricky Bhui, Kumar Kushagra, Gulbadin Naib, Rasikh Dar, Jhye Richardson, Sumit Kumar, Shai Hope, Swastik Chhikara, Lizaad Williams, Harry Brook, Lungi Ngidi, Mitchell Marsh.

IPL Auction LIVE: The fate of MI's superstars was just one of the questions. But whether MS Dhoni will play or not was THE question. Well technically that question remains open ended as it remains to be seen whether Dhoni will actually stay fit enough to actually play but for now, the old uncapped player magic trick was brought back and everyone is happy. Apart from that. CSK retained their captain Ruturaj Gaikwad, former captain Ravindra Jadeja, Shivam Dube and Matheesha Pathirana.

Full list of players not retained: Moeen Ali, Deepak Chahar, Tushar Deshpande, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Ajay Mandal, Mukesh Choudhary, Ajinkya Rahane, Shaik Rasheed, Mitchell Santner, Simarjeet Singh, Nishant Sindhu, Prashant Solanki, Maheesh Theekshana, Rachin Ravindra, Shardul Thakur, Daryl Mitchell, Sameer Rizvi, Mustafizur Rahman, Richard Gleeson, Avanish Rao Aravelly, Devon Conway

IPL Auction LIVE: Among the big questions before the retention deadline day was which of their superstar India players will Mumbai Indians let go of, for whatever reason. Well, there was no reason to do that as it turns out and MI retained their captain Hardik Pandya, former captain Rohit Sharma, India's T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma.

Full list of players not retained: Dewald Brevis, Ishan Kishan, Tim David, Harvik Desai, Arjun Tendulkar, Shams Mulani, Nehal Wadhera, Kumar Kartikeya, Piyush Chawla, Akash Madhwal, Luke Wood, Romario Shepherd, Gerald Coetzee, Shreyas Gopal, Nuwan Thushara, Naman Dhir, Anshul Kamboj, Mohammad Nabi, Shivalik Sharma, Kwena Maphaka