The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 mini-auction will be held on December 23 in Kochi. The highly-anticipated event will commence at 2:30 pm IST where a total number of 405 players will go under the hammer, including 273 Indians and 132 overseas stars, of which 4 players belong to associate nations.
Notably, for this auction, 87 slots are available, among which 30 are reserved for international players. The highest reserve price bracket is INR 2 crore, which comprises 19 overseas players. Ahead of the bidding event, former Indian cricketer, Suresh Raina has picked a player to watch out for.
Raina, known as Mr IPL, went with Ireland fast bowler Joshua Little, terming the pacer as a player who will be on the Little, who has a base price of INR 50 lakhs, is among the four Irish cricketers, along with Paul Stirling, Lorcan Tucker and Harry Tector, featured in the final list to take part in the IPL auction.
Little played with Raina in the recently-concluded Abu Dhabi T10 League. He was part of the victorious Deccan Gladiators and finished the tournament with 10 wickets in 10 matches. Little is currently the second-highest wicket-taker in T20Is in 2022. He has picked up 39 wickets from 26 matches at an economy rate of 7.58.
“Watch out for Joshua Little from Ireland. He has done really well in the World Cup just now, and I just played with him,” said Raina in a video shared by Jio Cinema.
Raina further reckoned that the likes of Sam Curran, Jaydev Unadkat and N Jagadeesan would also be hot picks as they have done well in their respective fields.
“Sam Curran has done really well for England as well as for Chennai Super Kings, and there is Ben Stokes who has led the England well. So having a top all-rounder in your team can change the movement of the game. Then there is Jaydev Unadkat, who just won the Vijay Hazare Trophy and has a lot of experience in the IPL. N Jagadeesan has a very good cricketing brain, and he bats so deep and is a very smart, calculative batsman. He has done really well for Tamil Nadu, watch out for him,” added Raina.