Starc, Stoinis, Fraser-McGurk sold for combined 5.78m at IPL Auction

A total of 37 Australians will go under the hammer at the Indian Premier League Auction beginning on Sunday night with Australian quick Mitchell Starc already snapped up for a big price.

Starc was one of the first few players to go under the hammer with the left-arm quick going to the Delhi Capitals for 11.75 crore ($2.14 million), less than half of the 24.75 crore he went for last year to break the record for the most expensive player in IPL history.

Marcus Stoinis was sold to Ricky Ponting's Punjab Kings for 11 crore ($2 million) while rising star Jake Fraser-McGurk was sold to the Capitals for 9 crore ($1.64 million) after the franchise which he starred for last year matched the bid of the Kings. 

Fraser-McGurk received a huge boost at this year's auction after going unsold last year before eventually heading to the Capitals for 50 lakhs ($91,650).

Glenn Maxwell was sold to the Kings for 4.2 crore ($765,000) and Mitchell Marsh was picked up by the Lucknow Super Giants for 3.4 crore (620,000). 

David Warner went unsold in the auction.

Earlier in the event, before Starc went up for bidders, his record price from last year was broken when the Kings snapped up Shreyas Iyer for 26.75 crore ($4.87 million), but then in a remarkable period of the auction, the record was broken again by Rishabh Pant.

Pant followed Starc in the auction and was picked up for 27 crore (AU$4.92 million) by Lucknow Super Giants to set the new record.

As of 1:20am (AEDT), no other Aussies have gone under the hammer yet with the auction set to run over two days beginning at 8:30pm (AEDT) on both Sunday and Monday night.

It is the second time the auction has been hosted outside of India.

While Patrick Cummins and Travis Head have been retained, 37 other Aussies, including Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell and Marcus Stoinis will throw their hat in the ring to be picked up via the mega auction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 

In further details about the tournament's big event, the ‘mega’ auction, which is held every three to four years, forces each team to freshen up their lists with a maximum of six players permitted to be retained by each franchise. Players who are not retained can go back in the auction, although there is no guarantee of going back to their old franchise.

A stunning 574 cricketers, up 241 from last year, have made submissions for the tournament with just over six per cent coming from the Australian cohort. 366 of the player submissions are local players and 208 players will qualify as overseas imports.

Australia sits alongside England as the nations with the most players nominating outside of India with 37 while South Africa is the next best with 31. New Zealand had 24 players nominate, West Indies 22, Sri Lanka 19 and Afghanistan 18.

Ollie Davies and Josh Brown sit among 12 overseas players who have nominated but not yet played for their nation.

There are up to eight base prices which players can choose with 13 Aussies electing the highest bracket at INR 2 crore ($366,600 AUD). These include Sean Abbott, Josh Hazlewood, Smith, Starc, Adam Zampa, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Spencer Johnson, Maxwell, Josh Inglis, Mitchell Marsh, Tim David, Marcus Stoinis and David Warner.

Other Aussies set to go under the hammer at various other base prices in the auction across two days on November 24 and 25 include Davies, Ben Dwarshuis, Chris Green, Josh Philippe, Tanveer Sangha, Xavier Bartlett, Ben McDermott, Michael Neser, Alex Carey, Nathan Ellis, Riley Meredith, Brown, Matthew Short, Will Sutherland, Ashton Agar, Hilton Cartwright, Cooper Connolly, Aaron Hardie, Lance Morris, Jhye Richardson, Ashton Turner, Jason Behrendorff, Daniel Sams and Andrew Tye.

Of the 37 Australians up for grabs in the auction beginning on Sunday, November 24 at 8:30pm (AEDT), 14 are contracted with Cricket Australia while six are without a state contract.