The Icelandic Cricket Association player auction will be televised for the first time when it takes place tomorrow, Saturday 9 January, at 1400 UTC. European Cricket Network will be broadcasting the auction on their YouTube channel, and it will be hosted by ECN frontman Vinny Sandhu.
A total of 62 players have signed up for the auction, a record number for Icelandic cricket. Four teams will bid for them: Reykjavík, Kópavogur, Hafnarfjörður and newcomers Vesturbær. Each team starts the auction with two players, the captain and the owner, already in their ranks. In most cases these are retained players from 2020, but Reykjavík have pulled off a major coup by signing star all-rounder Dushan Bandara from Kópavogur as captain.
Each player will have a base price of 2.000 krónur and a club’s purse will be 70.000 krónur, with which they must acquire a minimum of 14 players. Since this includes the captain and owner, who are automatically bought at their base price, clubs must buy at least 12 more players with the remaining 66.000 krónur. Any unsold players will be allocated between the four clubs at a later date.
Retained players (8)
Reykjavík: Lakmal Bandara (owner) and Dushan Bandara (captain).
Kópavogur: Abhi Chauhan (owner) and David Cook (captain).
Hafnarfjörður: Mohammad Younas (owner) and Samuel Gill (captain).
Vesturbær: Kathir Narayanan (owner) and Sampath Nagarajan (captain).
Existing players available (32)
David Abew-Baidoo, Asim Ayoub, Lakshitha Bimsara, Olafur Briem, Leslie Dcunha, Derick Deonarain, Mahinda Dissanayake, Riaan Dreyer, Sebastiaan Dreyer, Chamley Fernando, Ramachandran Gujapan, Khan Gul, Javed Hussain, Bala Kamallakharan, Agha Khan, Javed Khan, Omar Safi Khan, Sadun Lankathilaka, Sulaman Nawaz, Kali Nazar, Lee Nelson, Junaid Raja, Ravi Rawat, Abdur Rehman, Jakob Robertson, Dries Roux, Sathiya Rupan, Max Sandaru, Jegadeesh Subramaniyam, Prabhath Weerasooriya, Nolan Williams, Fida Wur.
Uncapped players available (22)
Abhijit Butti, Anantha Krishnan, Arun Cheerankavil, Avik Ghosh, Ben Boorman, Dimitrios Tsikas, Kuldeep Jha, Lakmal Amaratunga, Mahendra Suthar, Mohit Kotian, Mustak Shaikh, Pradip De, Rajesh Paul, Ramji Navapara, Rishabh Mishra, Saruna Dumbris, Sreejith Jayabhavan, Sunil Tandra, Uthaya Rupan, Vikram Kadan, Vinoth Kalaiazhagan, Tariq Muhmood.