Reports: Royal Challengers Bangalore undecided on retaining Virat Kohli

With just over a week to go for the IPL franchises to submit the list of players they want to retain ahead of the 2018 IPL, Royal Challengers Bangalore are yet to decide on the future of skipper Virat Kohli and South African batsman AB de Villiers.

According to reports in Ahmedabad Mirror, teams such as Royal Challengers Bangalore face a big dilemma in retaining their top players such as Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, thanks to a change in the new IPL retention policy manual released by BCCI.

Kohli is one of the two players (Harbhajan Singh being the other) to have played for the same team in the first ten editions.

The new policy states that "The deduction from salary purse in case of retention will be determined on the basis of guideline price or actual price (whichever is higher)."

What does this mean?

Last month, the IPL Governing Council announced that every franchise can retain a maximum of five players including the RTM. The GC also revealed that each franchise will be given 80 crores INR as their auction price and the price of the players retained will be deducted from the purse.

In the past, RCB were paying the Indian skipper a total of ?15 crores (actual price) but the franchise was deducted only ?12 crores (guideline price) from their budget. The new policy will see teams pay the highest amount from the guideline or actual price.

If players are not satisfied with the price being quoted by their respective franchises, they could opt to be a part of the auction pool which could see them get a huge price.

Just imagine this scenario

If a team ABC decides to retain three players – X, Y and Z, they could spend as much as ?36 crore on retentions alone, which is almost half their auction purse. If they spend 36 out of the 80 crores on retentions alone, how can the team put together a decent squad (20 more players at least) with the remaining Rs 44 crores?

Without a doubt, players like Yuzvendra Chahal, Kohli and de Villiers form the core of Royal Challengers Bangalore. But, will the franchise take a punt by spending nearly 50% of their purse on retaining these three players?

It won't be a surprise if we see the Indian skipper play for a new IPL team next year.