No Indian player was listed in the 549-man list for the auctions of the upcoming edition of the SA20 despite 13 Indians having registered for them. A few former top Indians, namely, Piyush Chawla, Siddarth Kaul, Ankit Rajpoot, Sarul Kanwar, Anureet Singh, Ansari Marouf, Mahesh Ahir, Nikhil Jaga, Mohamed Faidh, KS Naveen, Imran Khan, Venkatesh Galipelly and Atul Yadav, had registered themselves in the 800-man list for the auctions. However, none of the Indian players were in the auction list.
League Commissioner Graeme Smith spoke on the absence of the Indians, saying that the situation is "fluid".
Among the list of players in the auction, 241 overseas players will go under the hammer for 25 slots, while 308 South Africans will compete for 59 places in the bidding war that will take place on September 9 in Johannesburg.
"Indian players are always a fluid situation, depending on who's retiring and who's available. I think it was like 13 or 14 Indian players in the auction," the former South African captain told Indian media in a virtual interaction.
As per the BCCI regulations, active Indian cricketers - international or domestic - are not allowed to play in overseas leagues to protect the IPL's exclusivity until retirement.
Players must first retire from all forms of Indian cricket and then secure an NOC from the Board before seeking overseas opportunities. Explaining the auction process, Smith said: "What we do is we send the auction lists, which were over 800 names, to the franchises. They then send us their shortlist back, and then we collate a shortened list that goes to the auction.
"For us, this year, it was a big stepping stone. It was also, you know, after three years of the tournament, we felt that it was a time to kind of reset the regulations."
Smith spoke on the absence of the Indians in the auction. "You don't see an abundance of them involved in T20 leagues around the world. It's not a new thing. One thing that we have seen from our stats is that we’ve built a really strong viewership in India," the former South Africa captain said.
