IPL 2027 retentions
Who is overpaid in the IPL? Fees against our ratings before the 2027 retentions
Delhi Capitals paid ₹10.75 crore for T Natarajan at the IPL 2025 auction. The left-arm seamer played 12 games for them over two seasons and took five wickets, bowling about one run a match worse than an average bowler by our ratings. This week Delhi traded him back to Sunrisers Hyderabad, where he rejoins on a revised fee of ₹5 crore, and took the leg-spinner Zeeshan Ansari, on ₹40 lakh, in return.
It is Delhi’s second trade before the 15 November retention deadline, after Lucknow sent Rishabh Pant back to them in June. It leaves every franchise with a question to answer by then: does the fee a side paid tell you how well a player will play, and who among the league’s biggest earners is overpaid?
Our T20 ratings, built on every men’s T20 match since 2012, league and international, give each player’s worth in runs a match better or worse than an average player. Our fair price (est.) is the fee the market pays a player with that rating once retention slabs, pace bowling and fame are allowed for, with no credit for captaincy. A player more famous than is usual for his rating gains a premium, in an attempt to estimate his commercial value to the franchise, and a less famous one is never marked down. Our fair price is a yardstick for judging both who is overpaid and who is good value.
Does a high IPL fee tell you how well a player will play?
Across the 2022 to 2026 IPL seasons, it does not. A player’s rating on auction day told you how well he would play per match in the season that followed, and his fee told you nothing more. Two players with the same rating, one on a small fee and one on a big fee, played equally well per match.
What the fee does tell you is who the side will pick. Among the 894 squad players with enough T20 cricket to rate, a top-rated Indian on under 2% of the purse played 7.8 games a season, against 13.2 for a top-rated Indian on 10% of the purse or more. Top-rated overseas players on small fees were rarely picked, playing 4.9 games a season against 13.0 for those on big fees.
A franchise that has paid a lot for a player will not leave him out of the starting side, and that can keep a better player on a small fee on the bench for weeks.
What IPL sides pay extra for
Beyond how well a player plays, sides pay extra for four things. The first is captaincy: a captain costs 69% more than a player with the same rating, yet captains played no better per match than their rating said, and across eight T20 leagues since 2014, IPL included, captains’ results against the betting market spread no more than chance would give. So the fair price gives captaincy no credit, and a captain’s premium is money paid above it. The second is retention slabs: in the mega-auction years of 2022 and 2025 a retained player’s fee was set by a fixed slab, and those fees run 80% above an auction buy with the same rating.
The third is pace bowling, and it is the premium owners should look at hardest: at the open auction a pace bowler costs about twice as much as a spinner with the same rating, yet on the field the two played equally well per match. Across all fees, including retention slabs, a pace bowler costs 39% more than a spinner with the same rating. Bowling at the death carries no premium beyond being a pace bowler, and all-rounders cost no more than anyone else with the same rating, both before the Impact Player rule and since.
Fame is the fourth, and we measure it by Wikipedia page views in the year before the auction, our stand-in for fame. A player with twice the page views of another with the same rating costs 28% more. Better players tend to become more famous, but of two players with the same rating, the more famous one played no better per match. Fame may still earn an owner money through sponsors, crowds and television. That commercial value is hard to account for, and page views catch it only roughly, but it will undoubtedly be affecting the fees sides pay, so the fair price allows for it.
Which IPL players are most overpaid?
The analyst Dan Weston, whose own valuation model reached a similar list this week, named Rishabh Pant, Cameron Green, Matheesha Pathirana and Yuzvendra Chahal among the league’s most overpaid players, and all four come out the same way on our fair price.
Green cost Kolkata Knight Riders ₹25.2 crore at the 2026 auction, the most ever paid for an overseas player, and his fair price is about ₹5.1 crore. Kolkata bought him in December 2025, with the Impact Player rule in force since 2023: sides now pick a specialist batter and a specialist bowler where they once picked an all-rounder, and top-order batters in the IPL bowl about half as much as they used to. So Kolkata paid the record overseas fee for a kind of player the rule has made less useful.
Pathirana was Kolkata’s other big buy at that auction, at ₹18 crore, and his injury record makes the fee harder still to defend. A hamstring strain kept him out of the start of IPL 2024, and he went home that May with the injury after six games, so Kolkata bought him with that record known. In 2026 he bowled eight balls in his only game before a hamstring injury that needed surgery. Judged on how well he bowled when fit, and allowing for pace bowling, his fair price is about ₹3.1 crore.
Pant, Iyer and the retained batters
Pant is back at Delhi Capitals on ₹15 crore after Lucknow traded him in June, a steep cut from the record ₹27 crore Lucknow paid at the 2025 auction, and he is no longer a captain. That cut is the market marking him down, yet his fair price is about ₹3.2 crore. It already carries a premium for his fame, since he has about twice the page views of a typical player with his T20 rating, so the gap lies in his T20 cricket: about 2.2 runs a match better than an average player, against 8 or more for the best.
Shreyas Iyer, captain of Punjab Kings, is the best batter of the overpaid group by our ratings, and Punjab’s trouble with him lies in the size of the fee. They paid ₹26.75 crore for him at the 2025 auction, and allowing for the commercial pull of his name, with no credit for the captaincy, his fair price is about ₹6.3 crore. Punjab also spent ₹18 crore apiece at that auction on Arshdeep Singh, a left-arm seamer whose fair price is about ₹4.4 crore even with the pace premium, and the leg-spinner Chahal, at about ₹3.8 crore.
Heinrich Klaasen and Nicholas Pooran are fine batters whom Sunrisers Hyderabad and Lucknow chose to keep on retention slabs, and both are overpaid even after the slab premium is counted. Klaasen is on ₹23 crore, against a fair price of about ₹7.8 crore, and Pooran is on ₹21 crore, against about ₹9.8 crore. Ruturaj Gaikwad, Chennai Super Kings’ captain on an ₹18 crore slab, is in the same position: allowing for the slab and his fame, with no credit for the captaincy, his fair price is about ₹6.4 crore.
Our fair price (est.)Current fee
Are Kohli and Pandya overpaid?
Virat Kohli’s runs alone would make him worth about ₹5.3 crore, against the ₹21 crore his retention slab pays him. He is also the most-read IPL player on Wikipedia, and once his fame and the slab are allowed for his fair price is about ₹19 crore, so he is paid about the going rate for the most famous player in the league.
Hardik Pandya’s runs and wickets by themselves are worth about ₹3.2 crore, a long way short of the ₹16.35 crore Mumbai Indians pay him. The going rate for a famous pace-bowling all-rounder on a retention slab is about ₹15.9 crore, with no credit for his captaincy of Mumbai, so like Kohli he is paid about the going rate.
Mumbai have had trade inquiries for him, and reports say he has a fresh shin injury, though no trade has been agreed. Whoever makes the next call on him will pay about the going rate, so his fitness is the open question.
The best bargains in the IPL
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi tops the best-value list. Rajasthan Royals bought him for ₹1.1 crore at the November 2024 auction, aged 13 and before he had played an IPL game. Sides buy many young players cheaply hoping some come good, and most do not; he did. He is now the top-rated batter in men’s T20 in our ratings, and after Kohli the most-read IPL player on Wikipedia. His fair price reaches the ₹27 crore ceiling, so the next time Rajasthan have to pay the going rate he is likely to cost the record fee or close to it.
Three established players also reach that ceiling: Abhishek Sharma on ₹14 crore at Sunrisers, Jasprit Bumrah on ₹18 crore at Mumbai, and Sunil Narine, who is 38, on ₹12 crore at Kolkata. Bumrah hurt his left knee fielding in an ODI against England in July and missed the Test series in Sri Lanka, but he has since been picked for India’s Test series in New Zealand, which starts on 19 November. Kolkata also have Varun Chakravarthy on ₹12 crore, with a fair price of about ₹18.1 crore.
Further down the fee scale, Finn Allen, an overseas batter bought for ₹2 crore at the 2026 auction, has a fair price of about ₹13 crore. Priyansh Arya, a left-handed opener on ₹3.8 crore at Punjab, and Mohsin Khan, a left-arm seamer Lucknow kept on a ₹4 crore slab for uncapped players, both come out at about ₹12.4 crore, though a knee injury cost Mohsin all of IPL 2025. Two overseas spinners on ₹2 crore complete the list. Wanindu Hasaranga at Lucknow comes out at about ₹8.5 crore, though he did not play in IPL 2026 after tearing a hamstring at the T20 World Cup in February, and has played for Sri Lanka since. Mitchell Santner at Mumbai comes out at about ₹7.9 crore.
Our fair price (est.)Current fee
Should IPL sides release their expensive players?
Sides have generally read their own expensive players well. In the mini-auction years of 2023, 2024 and 2026, players on 5% of the purse or more whom their side released had played 2.2 runs a match worse than an average player in the season before, while those kept had played 3.0 runs a match better.
The judgement held up. Of the 43 expensive players released, 25 played again, and they stayed below average the following season, 0.9 runs a match worse, while the 176 kept stayed 2.1 runs a match better. Yet most of the overpaid players in the current squads were bought at open auction rather than kept after a season in the side.
The verdict for retention day
Punjab Kings hold three of the players paid furthest above our fair price, so retention day could change most for them. They could put Chahal and Arshdeep back into the auction, and they could release Iyer, their captain and best batter, and even bid for him again in December. Kolkata have the weakest pace bowling of the ten sides, with Pathirana injured, and the strongest spin, through Narine and Varun, so releasing Green or Pathirana could free money to improve their seam bowling. Lucknow have already moved Pant on and taken Kuldeep, so their remaining call is Pooran. Pant is now Delhi’s question, and Gaikwad is Chennai’s.
Sunrisers Hyderabad have the most straightforward decision of all: the clearest need, and the clearest way to meet it. Their spin bowling resources are the weakest of the ten sides, and releasing Klaasen would free his fee and an overseas place. Their home ground in Hyderabad is one of the two IPL grounds that most favour pace, but across IPL grounds a ground’s lean barely carries from one season to the next, home spinners have done no better at their own grounds than visiting spinners, and Sunrisers play half their league games away. Livingstone, also well above his fair price, is a possible second release, and Santner one possible target, though he hurt his non-bowling shoulder after four games for Mumbai in April.
Sides read their own expensive players well when they let them go, and most of the overpaid players in the current squads came from the open auction, so retention day presents sides with the chance to offload players they have overpaid for. Klaasen’s is the call where a release meets a clear need: Sunrisers would lose a fine batter, but gain the money, and free an overseas place, to put towards mending the weakest spin attack in the league.