In a shocking move, former England speedster James Anderson has registered his name for the IPL 2025 mega auctions. Anderson, who retired from Test cricket a few months back during a series against West Indies, has never played in the IPL.
Anderson has registered for the upcoming auctions for Rs 1.25 crores. His last T20 game was more than 10 years ago when he played for Lancashire in the NatWest T20 Blast against Warwickshire. After his retirement, he took over the bowling coach role with England.
Meanwhile, England’s star all-rounder Ben Stokes’ name went missing from the list of registered players. Stokes had opted out of IPL 2024 and played only a handful of matches in IPL 2023 for the Chennai Super Kings.
Several Indians including Khaleel Ahmed, Deepak Chahar, Venkatesh Iyer, Avesh Khan, Ishan Kishan, Mukesh Kumar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Prasidh Krishna, T Natarajan, Devdutt Padikkal, Krunal Pandya, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj and Umesh Yadav have registered themselves at a base price of Rs 2 crore.
Coming back to Anderson, the England veteran had stated recently that there’s an ‘intrigue’ in him to play in the shorter formats after he retired from Tests. “I might be in a bit of denial because I’m well aware I won’t play for England again, but I’ve still not made a decision on my actual cricket career,” Anderson told the Press Association.
“There’s definitely a bit of intrigue with the shorter formats because I’ve not played any franchise stuff before. Watching The Hundred this year, seeing the ball swing around, it makes me feel like I could do a job there. I know it’s a while since I played it and my age will get brought up again but I really feel I’ll be good enough to play that form of cricket,” he added.
Notably, as per ESPNCricinfo, Thomas Draca is the Italian player who has registered for the IPL auction. Draca is a medium pacer who was recently seen playing in the Global T20 Canada for Brampton. The 24-year-old bowler was also recently by MI Emirates for the next season of the ILT20 in the UAE.