Photo Credit: Instagram Photo of @rashwin99
As the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) deliberates on the rules and regulations for the upcoming mega-auction ahead of the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) 18th season, Ravichandran Ashwin has expressed his opposition to the Right-To-Match (RTM) card.
The BCCI has conducted several meetings with franchise owners to gather their input on the maximum number of players a team should be allowed to retain, including a combination of retentions and RTM.
Retention allows franchises to secure the services of a player from the previous season without sending them to auction, while the RTM enables franchises to reclaim a player from the auction by matching the highest bid made by another team.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, Ashwin argued that the RTM rule is unfair to players.
“There is no rule more unfair for a player than RTM,” he said.
“Because how has the RTM rule been so far? For example, there is a player called X. He is on a team called, let’s say, Sunrisers. His current value is around 5–6 crores. He’s gone into the auction. Now say Sunrisers want to buy the player back. So, the Sunrisers will bid for the player at a base price of 2 crore.”
“Then, let’s say, KKR and the Mumbai Indians are bidding for the player. The bid goes up to 6 crores and finally they say, ‘The player is sold to the Mumbai Indians for 6 crores.’ So (with RTM), the Sunrisers will then bid for and take the player at 6 crores. The problem here is that Sunrisers are happy. But KKR and MI are unhappy. The only person (team) happy is Sunrisers. Because, in the beginning, they gave attendance (bid at base price).”
“After that, there is no fair value at all. There is a bidder. The KKR and Mumbai Indians are fighting. For one of those teams, it has gone up to 6 crores. What does SRH say? ‘You bought the player, right? Return the player back.’
“Very unfair. Because, at this time, SRH has to bid 6.20, the other team 6.40 and they should reach the fair value of the player. The problem with RTM is that it is not fair value for the player. So, if you give three RTMs [to each team], the players will only go (virtually) empty-handed. Already, they don’t get fair value in the auction,” he elaborated.
Before the 2018 mega-auction, teams were allowed to use three Right-To-Match (RTM) cards. However, the rule was eliminated for the 2022 mega-auction to provide the new franchises — Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans — access to a larger pool of players to build their squads.
