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Ravichandran Ashwin and Faheem Ashraf in same dressing room? ILT20 auction dynamics - a ticking time bomb
The ILT20 auction includes Indian and Pakistani players, allowing for a potentially shared dressing room, which could increase diplomatic tensions.
The ILT20 is all set to stage its first-ever player auction today at Four Seasons, Jumeirah Beach, Dubai. Ravichandran Ashwin tops the catalogue of players at the maximum base price of $ 120,000. However, he is not the only Indian player registered for this auction. Names like Ankit Rajput, Priyank Panchal, Siddharth Kaul, and Piyush Chawla will also be going under the hammer this afternoon. Also, the Sharjah Warriorz have signed Dinesh Karthik in the pre-auction window.
The pool of players also includes several Pakistani internationals like Fakhar Zaman, Saim Ayub, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah, and Faheem Ashraf. This actually means that a franchise could stack Indian and Pakistani players in the same squad, resulting in a shared dressing room for the two nationalities.
This possibility is significant because it comes days after the Asia Cup 2025 ended in acrimony. An ugly presentation ceremony standoff that was dragged into an ACC meeting, where BCCI demanded India’s trophy and medals to be handed over, while ACC Chief cum PCB Chairman, Mohsin Naqvi, showed unwillingness to do the same. The row still lives on. In the backdrop, Indian and Pakistani cricketers potentially sharing a dressing room in the UAE can lead to further diplomatic interference in the game.
The geopolitical undertone
Bilateral cricket between India and Pakistan has been frozen since 2012-13, with ties repeatedly disrupted by broader political and security tensions. Encounters between the two nations are confined to ICC or ACC events. League cricket does promise an overlap of culture in the dressing room, but given the recent incidents, even in a private league like the World Championship of Legends, this seems to be an impending issue.
How the ILT20 might enable the India-Pakistan mix
In the first-ever ILT20 auction, each team would bring $800K into the room plus any unspent portion of their $1.2m from retentions or direct signings. The franchises must finish their auction between 1.5 m and 2 m. They can also sign two wildcards ($250K) outside the auction. These levers make a cross-border pairing within a roster a very big possibility.
Speaking of the auctions, it will have players in four different slabs - $120K, $80K, $40K, $10K. Ravichandran Ashwin sits in the top bracket of $120K. Fakhar Zaman, Saim Ayub, Mohammad Nawaz, and Faheem Ashraf will all feature in the $ 80K. Each franchise can build a squad of 19-21 members with a minimum of 11 full member players, mandated UAE/associate quotas, and at least two UAE and one associate member player in every XI. This architecture naturally presents the Indian and Pakistani players not only as part of the same roster but also as spending time and pairing up for the franchise’s cause on the field.
Bottom line
The first-ever ILT20 auction is arriving amid heightened India-Pakistan tensions from the Asia Cup fallout. Any pairing in the dressing room between two players of the nations might turn out to be a ticking time bomb, leading to further controversies and off-the-field theatrics and drama.
