IPL 2027 auction
IPL 2027 auction bargains: 10 players hiding in plain sight
A strike rate of 222. Seventy sixes in 28 innings. Two England caps in the last week. And still no IPL auction deal. Aneurin Donald is the sort of player who makes you wonder what a batter has to do to get noticed.
He isn’t the only one. These are ten players who could be in the pool for December’s IPL 2027 mini-auction and look far better than the price they are likely to go for: what makes each of them dangerous, the numbers behind it, and why franchises might still walk past. Four have never been bought at an IPL auction.
| Player | Projected fee (est.) | Our valuation (est.) | Country | Age at auction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aneurin Donald | ₹2.5 cr | ₹27 cr | England | 29 |
| Mitchell Owen | ₹4 cr | ₹27 cr | Australia | 25 |
| Wanindu Hasaranga | ₹6.5 cr | ₹19 cr | Sri Lanka | 29 |
| Blessing Muzarabani | ₹4 cr | ₹14.5 cr | Zimbabwe | 30 |
| Mohsin Khan | ₹1.5 cr | ₹10.5 cr | India | 28 |
| Scott Currie | ₹1 cr | ₹10.5 cr | England | 25 |
| Nathan Ellis | ₹3.5 cr | ₹9.5 cr | Australia | 32 |
| Steve Smith | ₹4 cr | ₹8 cr | Australia | 37 |
| Adam Zampa | ₹3 cr | ₹8 cr | Australia | 34 |
| Maheesh Theekshana | ₹3.5 cr | ₹7 cr | Sri Lanka | 26 |
Aneurin Donald: what more does he have to do?
Derbyshire · batter · projected ₹2.5 crore
Nobody in men’s T20 who has faced 400 balls over the last two years has scored faster. Donald’s 971 runs have come at 222 per hundred balls. The only player in touching distance is Vaibhav Suryavanshi, the teenager who has lit up the IPL, at 221.6.
Most of it happens in the first six overs. He has made 785 runs in the powerplay at 222, where Blast batters as a whole score at 143 in those overs. That is the whole job description of an IPL opener, done at a rate almost nobody matches.
Almost every run has come in the Blast, a level below the IPL, and his England career is two innings old: 12 off 5 and 21 off 13 against Sri Lanka. Even marked down for that, our valuation hits ₹27 crore, the record fee. If he goes anywhere near his projected fee, the team that takes the chance gets a lot of powerplay hitting for its money.
Mitchell Owen: the hitting, with bowling thrown in
Hobart Hurricanes · all-rounder · projected ₹4 crore
Owen made his name with 108 off 42 balls in the BBL|14 final, and the Hurricanes won the title. Two years on, he has 1,653 runs at a strike rate of 190, 130 sixes, and 155 off 68 for the Washington Freedom in June. In the powerplay he scores at 192, where batters in the same leagues manage 135.
The bowling is the bonus, not the reason. He has taken 39 wickets, but at 10.2 an over, which makes him a sixth bowler for the odd over rather than a fifth. His IPL career is a single game for Punjab Kings in May 2025, after they signed him outside the auction, and he has never been bought at one.
Pick him to open. Anything he bowls is a bonus.
Wanindu Hasaranga: will Lucknow keep him?
Lucknow Super Giants · all-rounder · projected ₹6.5 crore
Lucknow bought Hasaranga for ₹2 crore at the last auction, and he hasn’t played an IPL game since May 2025. Everywhere else he has kept taking wickets: 87 in 68 games over the last two years, for Sri Lanka, Rajasthan Royals, the Desert Vipers, the Kandy Royals and the St Kitts and Nevis Patriots. Most of his overs come in the middle, where he has gone at 7.6 an over against 8.0 in the same competitions.
Our ratings put him among the 15 best players likely to be available. Lucknow have him and Mohsin on their books. Will they keep both?
Blessing Muzarabani: dot, dot, dot
Zimbabwe · bowler · projected ₹4 crore
Forty-six per cent of Muzarabani’s deliveries over the last two years have been dots, against 40% across men’s T20. He has 65 wickets in 49 games at 7.3 an over.
Plenty of those wickets came against associate nations in World Cup qualifying, and his IPL experience is two games for the Kolkata Knight Riders this year, again signed outside the auction. But he did the same for the Gulf Giants in the ILT20, and our ratings still put him among the 25 best players available once the opposition is allowed for. A bowler who makes batters wait this often is worth the four overs every time.
Mohsin Khan: the Indian bowler Lucknow may not keep
Lucknow Super Giants · bowler · projected ₹1.5 crore
Only four overseas players fit in an IPL XI, so Indian bowlers who take wickets without leaking runs are the first thing to run out at any auction. Mohsin is our highest-rated uncapped Indian bowler, and he has played 31 IPL games for Lucknow since they bought him for ₹20 lakh in 2022.
The last two years have been thin: eight T20s, 12 wickets at 8.2 an over, and a franchise will want to know why before it bids. That gap is also why his projected fee is so low. If Lucknow let him go in November, he is worth fighting over.
Scott Currie: the overs nobody wants
Hampshire · bowler · projected ₹1 crore
The last five overs are where T20 bowlers go to get hit, and Currie has made them his job. In the Blast over the last two years he has bowled 271 balls from the 16th over on at 8.4 an over, where the rest of the competition goes at 9.9, and taken a wicket every nine balls against every 11.
He has 53 Blast wickets in 32 games across the two seasons, and 2026 was the better one: 26 in 15 games at 7.5 an over. England had already noticed, calling him into the T20I squad in Ireland in September 2025 when Saqib Mahmood was injured, though he didn’t get a game. He was born in Dorset and played three ODIs for Scotland in 2024, qualifying through his father.
Almost all of it has come in the Blast, and his only T20 cricket abroad is two games for the Dubai Capitals. At a crore, is that a risk or a reason?
Nathan Ellis: any phase you like
Hobart Hurricanes · bowler · projected ₹3.5 crore
Ellis has 58 wickets in 42 games over the last two years, for Australia, the Hurricanes and Chennai Super Kings. From the seventh over to the fifteenth he has gone at 7.2 an over, where bowlers in the same competitions concede 8.6, and in the powerplay at 7.7 against 8.4. At the death he goes at par: 9.0 against 9.1.
His last IPL game was in March 2025. A seamer a captain can use in every phase, at about ₹3.5 crore.
Steve Smith: are we writing him off too soon?
Sydney Sixers · batter · projected ₹4 crore
Smith hasn’t been bought at an IPL auction since the Delhi Capitals paid ₹2.2 crore in 2021, and at 37 most people have moved on. His numbers haven’t: 1,372 runs over the last two years at an average of 38, for the Sixers, the Multan Sultans, the Washington Freedom and the Amsterdam Flames.
The mistake would be to judge him as an opener. In the powerplay he scores at 142, barely above the 136 managed in the same leagues. From the seventh over to the fifteenth he scores at 158, where the rest manage 133. That is a No. 3 who stops the middle overs from drifting.
Don’t ask him to open. Bat him at three, and at about ₹4 crore, see who is right.
Adam Zampa: the middle overs, handled
Hobart Hurricanes · bowler · projected ₹3 crore
Leg-spinners who can hold the middle overs are what every IPL side plans around, and Zampa is one of the best there is. Over the last two years he has 82 wickets in 56 games, for Australia, the Renegades, Surrey, the Karachi Kings, the Sharjah Warriorz and Sunrisers Hyderabad. From the seventh over to the fifteenth he has gone at 7.7 an over, where bowlers in the same competitions concede 8.5.
Sunrisers bought him for ₹2.4 crore for 2025, and his last IPL game was that March. At 34 he moves to the Hurricanes this summer. Give him overs seven to fifteen and let the quicks worry about the rest.
Maheesh Theekshana: spin with the new ball
Sri Lanka · bowler · projected ₹3.5 crore
More than two in every five balls Theekshana has bowled over the last two years have come in the powerplay: 774 of them, at 8.2 an over, level with the 8.3 conceded by bowlers in the same competitions. In the middle overs he has gone at 7.1 against 8.0. He has 75 wickets in 77 games, for Sri Lanka and seven franchises.
Rajasthan paid ₹4.4 crore for him in 2025. He is 26. How many IPL sides have a spinner they can trust with the new ball?
So, who would you take?
Donald’s hitting, Owen at the top, Smith at three or Zampa in the middle overs? Which of these would you want your franchise to take a chance on?
When is the IPL 2027 auction?
The BCCI hasn’t announced a date. Reports point to the third week of December 2026, with 16 December the date most often mentioned, and to a venue in India. It is a mini-auction, since the last mega-auction came before the 2025 season. Franchises name the players they are releasing in November, and those lists decide who is actually in the pool.
How we worked it out
The projected fees come from a model of 1,244 sales at IPL auctions from 2014 to 2026, each using the player’s record as it stood on auction day. Tested on each auction from 2019 to 2026 using only the auctions before it, it ranked the real fees with a correlation of 0.66. It learns what franchises pay for, and that is mostly profile: T20I caps, recent IPL games and years in the game. Our valuations come from the player ratings behind every match preview on this site: runs a match scored or saved above a replacement-level player, allowing for the standard of each competition and of the batters or bowlers faced, with the same total money shared out and capped at the ₹27 crore record. Comparisons with other players are with the same competitions and the same overs. Ratings run to 10 September 2026, and the figures quoted run to 17 September. We left out the stars their franchises will keep, players from Pakistan, and anyone who hasn’t played a T20 in the last year.