IPL 2019 auction: Eoin Morgan, four other players included as late entrants

Eoin Morgan, the current skipper of the England cricket team, has been included as one of the late entrants in the Indian Premier League 2019 auction that will be held in Jaipur. Morgan, along with other players like South Africa’s Rassie van der Dussen, Mayank Dagar, Pranav Gupta and Australia’s Riley Meredith has taken the auction numbers to 351. The auction will be conducted on December 18 and 19. The England skipper will be priced at the elite base price of Rs 2 crore, becoming the 10^th foreign player to be priced in this elite bracket along with his fellow England counterpart Sam Curran. Morgan has had previous experiences of playing in the IPL, featuring for Sunrisers Hyderabad, Kings XI Punjab and Kolkata Knight Riders.

Rassie van der Dussen, the South African batsman, has played two Twenty20 Internationals against Zimbabwe in October and hit a solid 56. In the recent Mzansi Super League Twenty20 tournament in South Africa, van der Dussen hit three consecutive fifties, including 59* in the final as his team Jozi Stars beat Cape Town Blitz to clinch the title for the first time. Van der Dussen’s base price is Rs 50 lakh and he can be a valuable buy for a team looking for stability in the middle order.

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Riley Meredith, a 22-year-old from Tasmania, has played a couple of Twenty20s for the Hobart Hurricanes in the Big Bash League. He is a right-arm fast bowler who made his debut in First Class and List A cricket in 2017. Pranav Gupta, who is playing for Jammu and Kashmir, has played 11 Twenty20s ever since his debut in 2015 while Dagar, who is currently playing for Himachal Pradesh and is the nephew of Virender Sehwag, has had previous experience having been picked by Kings XI Punjab in the 2018 IPL Auctions.

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The 2019 IPL could mostly be played in the period of March to first week of May as the teams gear up to play the World Cup which will be held after the tournament in May. The tournament could mostly be played overseas as it might clash with the General Elections which could be held in the country from April to May.