Jofra Archer and Mark Wood are not on the shortlist for the 2025 Indian Premier League auction as England look to carefully manage their workload in what will be a crucial year for the Test team.
Neither Archer nor Wood were among the 37 English players on the 574-strong list that will go under the gavel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia next weekend. However, James Anderson has made the cut as a longlist of more than 1,500 players was trimmed. A total of 204 slots are available at the auction, 70 of them for non-Indian players.
The pair, who have been bedeviled by injury, are seen as central to England’s hopes of beating India at home and Australia away in a huge 2025 for Ben Stokes’s Test team.
They are both on high-value central contracts with the national team – 34-year-old Wood’s has two years to run, while 29-year-old Archer’s expires in October but an extension is all but guaranteed – so the England management are eager to keep them fit to play Test cricket.
Confusion over eligibility for 2026 and 2027
Both men initially registered, but are not on the list to be auctioned at this stage. Insiders believe it is possible they could still be added in the coming days. This is because new IPL rules say that players who have played the tournament before who do not enter the auction this year are banned from the 2026 and 2027 editions as well, which would be very costly financially in the autumn of their careers. England and the players are still scrabbling to establish the exact situation with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
Also not on the list are Test captain Stokes and wicketkeeper Jamie Smith, who chose not to nominate for the auction. Joe Root and Chris Woakes have previously played in the tournament but are not on the auction shortlist, either.
There are more than three dozen Englishmen on the list, though. They include Jos Buttler, who is the first name on the list and has the highest base price possible of two crore rupees (around £188,000, but he can expect to go for much more), and James Anderson, who at 42 years of age has chucked his name into the mix for the first time after his international retirement, having played no T20 cricket for a decade.
While Archer and Wood are not on the list, other components of the pace attack England are building for Test cricket are, such as this year’s breakout stars Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse, as well as Olly Stone and Matthew Potts.
Wood is out for the remainder of the year with a right elbow injury, but will travel to South Africa to train with Andrew Flintoff’s England Lions squad in the coming weeks. Archer, meanwhile, has performed impressively on England’s limited-overs tour of the Caribbean as he edges towards a red-ball return. If Archer was to skip the IPL, it opens up the possibility of him completing a County Championship match for Sussex for the first time in seven years, possibly in a mouthwatering attack alongside Ollie Robinson and the West Indies star Jayden Seales.
English players on IPL shortlist
Jos Buttler, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook, Jonny Bairstow, Phil Salt, Sam Curran, Adil Rashid, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Ben Duckett, James Vince, Moeen Ali, Will Jacks, Tom Banton, Sam Billings, Jordan Cox, Gus Atkinson, Tom Curran, Ollie Pope, Richard Gleeson, Reece Topley, Luke Wood, Leus du Plooy, Michael Pepper, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Dan Mousley, Jamie Overton, Olly Stone, Dan Worrall, Matthew Potts, John Turner, Dan Lawrence, James Anderson, Chris Jordan, Tymal Mills, David Payne and Benny Howell.
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