'The franchises send us their shortlist...': Graeme Smith reveals why no Indian player made it to SA20 auction list

Former South Africa captain and SA20 commisioner Graeme Smith revealed the reason why no Indian player was able to make it to the league's final auction list. There were over 800 cricketers who registereed their names for the auction and this included over a dozen Indian players as well. The auction, which is set to be held on September 9, wil have a list consisting of 549 players. However, no Indian has managed to make the cut into the list and thus, will not be going under the hammer.

The Indian players that had registered their names for the SA20 auction are - 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. While Dinesh Karthik had become the first Indian to feature in SA last season, thsis year no player from the country will be in action in the tournament.

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Smith was asked why there will be a lack of Indian talent on display during the upcoming season of SA20 and he stated that after the initial list was made, they sent it to the franchise, who made a shortened list that will go to the auctio

“Indian players is 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 but what we do is we send the auction list, which was over 800 names, to the franchises they then send us their shortlist back and then we collate a shortened list that then starts to go to the auction," Smith said while responding to a query from News18 CricketNext.

Smith, who has previously expressed how he is wants to develop SA20 as the second-biggest league after IPL, have increased the salary cap for each team to R41 million. It is safe to say that the upcoming season of the SA20 will be very important for the league.

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“For us this year, it was a big stepping stone. It was also after three years of tournament we felt that it was a time to kind of reset the regulations. So, we really did force the team ‘s hands in terms of getting them to strategise of who was going to be retained, who was going to be the pre-signed internationals and so on. And then with a very big auction coming up, how they would approach that," Smith stated.