The auction for the sixth season of Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) will take place today and tomorrow (May 30 and May 31) in Mumbai. A total of 422 players will be going under the hammer during the PKL 2018 auction. Out of the total players, this year’s auction will feature 58 overseas players hailing from 14 different countries. Apart from it, the total list has 87 players, who have been scouted from the league's Future Kabaddi Heroes Programme (FKH) held in 18 cities.

The PKL auction, for the first time, will see the concept of "Final Bid Match" (FBM). It is similar to Indian Premier League’s (IPL) Right to Match (RTM) card. The FBM will allow franchises to buy back the maximum of two players from its previous squad. The franchises will use the card to match the bid made by another team and will have to right to snap the player.

Ahead of the PKL 2018 auction, nine franchises retained a total of 21 players. Each team was given an option of retaining maximum four players from last season’s squad. Meanwhile, three teams- U Mumba, Jaipur Pink Panthers, and UP Yoddha refrained from retaining any player and will have to build the squads from scratch.

Team-wise list of players retained ahead of PKL 2018 auction:

Patna Pirates: Pardeep Narwal, Jaideep, Jawahar Dagar, Manish Kumar.

Puneri Paltan: Sandeep Narwal, Rajesh Mondal, Gurunath More, Girish Ernak.

Gujarat Fortunegiants: Sachin Kawar, Sunil Kumar, Mahendra Ganesh Rajput.

Tamil Thalaivas: Ajay Thakur, Amit Hooda, C. Arun.

Bengal Warriors: Surjeet Singh, Maninder Singh.

Telugu Titans: Nilesh Salunke, Mohsen Maghsoudlou Jafari.

Bengaluru Bulls: Rohit Kumar.

Dabang Delhi: Meraj Sheykh.

Haryana Steelers: Kuldeep Singh.

Category-wise base price:

Category A: INR 20 Lakh.

Category B: INR 12 Lakh.

Category C: INR 8 Lakh.

Category D: INR 5 lakh.

New Young Players: INR 6.6 Lakh.

Each franchise can have a maximum squad strength of 25 players while 18 is the minimum number required. The squads must have three players from the FKH programme. As far as the number of foreign players is concerned, teams will be allowed to have a maximum of four overseas recruits. The minimum number, in this case, is two.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 30, 2018 11:06 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).