Ahead of the IPL 2026 mini-auction in Abu Dhabi on December 16, Ravichandran Ashwin has thrown the spotlight on a category that often decides how the room heats up, uncapped Indian wicketkeeper-batters.
Speaking on Ash ki Baat with senior journalist Vimal Kumar, Ashwin suggested that while marquee names will always grab headlines, it’s the lesser-known Indian keepers who could quietly reshape bidding strategies. In his view, it only takes one aggressive move for a chain reaction to follow.
Ashwin admitted it’s never easy to predict exactly who will go big at an auction, but he narrowed it down to two names who fit a very specific need. Kartik Sharma and Salil Arora, both uncapped wicketkeeper-batters, are the kind of profiles franchises don’t want to miss out on.
“Between these two, I feel one will go expensive,” Ashwin said, explaining how auction dynamics tend to work. If a team misses Kartik Sharma, they’ll immediately switch focus to Salil Arora and vice versa. Once that urgency kicks in, prices can jump quickly, even for players with modest base prices.
That’s the psychology of an IPL auction. Teams don’t just bid on talent; they bid on solutions. And Indian wicketkeeper-batters who can contribute in the middle order are among the most in-demand solutions right now.
Salil Arora, in particular, has timed his surge perfectly. The Punjab batter recently smashed a breathtaking 125 off just 45 balls in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, clearing the ropes 11 times. Performances like that tend to echo inside auction rooms, where decision-makers suddenly feel the pressure of scarcity.
Ashwin also flagged Tamil Nadu’s Tushar Raheja as another uncapped name worth tracking closely. Like Sharma and Arora, Raheja comes in with a base price of just Rs 30 lakh, low enough to tempt multiple franchises into a bidding scrap.
With 77 slots to be filled and a shortlist packed with uncapped players, Ashwin believes this auction is perfectly set up for a few surprise price spikes. If teams sense they’re running out of Indian keeper options, one bold bid could be all it takes to send the paddle flying.
As history has shown time and again, IPL auctions aren’t won just by planning, they’re won by reading the room. And this time, the uncapped wicketkeepers might just control it.
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