Indian and Madhya Pradesh all-rounder, Venkatesh Iyer was sold to RCB for 7 Crore. The left hand batter can slot nicely into this RCB line up. In IPL 2025 he did not justify this price. Iyer played 11 matches, scoring only 142 runs at an average of 20.29 with a strike rate of 139.22, and he did not bowl a single delivery during the season.
Iyer was bought for a staggering ₹23.75 crore at last year’s auction by KKR, but was released by the franchise following a below-par season in IPL 2025. Now RCB who do not have much left hand batters in the squad have picked him up for a reasonable price. The left hander just smashed a fifty in SMAT earlier in the day.
A total of 359 players – 246 Indians and 113 overseas players will be part of the IPL 2026 auction pool with the 10 franchises bidding to fill up a maximum of 77 slots, including 31 reserved for foreign players. As per the IPL rules, each team can register a maximum squad size of 25. The number of overseas players is eight. The IPL 2026 auction will also introduce a salary cap for overseas players. The maximum fee payable will be the lower of two figures – the highest retention price (₹18 crore) or the highest bid from the previous mega auction. In a mini-auction defined by scarcity, franchises will pay not for reputation, but for fit and those holding the purse strings know it. The Indian Premier League 2026 will start on March 26 and go on till May 31. There will be 74 matches for this season
