UK sport is hosting its first major player auction this week with a host of cricketers going under the hammer ahead of the 2026 edition of The Hundred.
and on Thursday it is over to the men - live on Your Site Cricket from 10am - as players hope to be purchased at Piccadilly Lights in London.
A live stream will be available at the top of this page on Thursday and on the Your Site Cricket YouTube channel.
The change from a draft system has come after heavy private investment into the eight Hundred franchises, with four of the sides - Manchester Super Giants, MI London, Southern Brave and Sunrisers Leeds - taken over, in part or in full, by IPL owners. A player auction has been a staple of the Indian Premier League for years.
Players are split into three categories: hero players, ranked players and nominated players.
Hero players are your big stars. The ones teams have already earmarked as potential key signings, with 50 players in this batch.
They include England internationals past or present in Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Josh Tongue, Jordan Cox and Adil Rashid, South Africa's Aiden Markram, New Zealand's Finn Allen and Pakistan duo Haris Rauf and Usman Tariq.
Once the hero section is complete, we move on to the ranked category.
Here, teams will nominate 25 players each with the most popular picks then up for grabs. These could include hero players who went unsold or others outside that set yet to be put forward.
Finally, it is on to the nominated players.
Once a team picks an unsigned player, after a random draw to determine selection order, that player will be put up for auction. If no other franchise bids for them, they will join the team that initially nominated them.
Previously, teams could only take on three overseas players in The Hundred but that has been upped to four.
The men's overall salary pot in £2.05m, although teams have already spent some of those funds through retaining or acquiring up to four players each ahead of the inaugural auction.
Each of the men's teams have had £950,000 removed after making all four permitted signings during the pre-auction window.
Jacob Bethell (Birmingham Phoenix), Jos Buttler (Manchester Super Giants), Jofra Archer (Southern Brave) and Harry Brook (Sunrisers Leeds) were among the big names retained, while Australia T20 captain Mitchell Marsh (Sunrisers Leeds) is one of the new signings.
No. The England Test captain, who has previously played for Northern Superchargers (now known as Sunrisers Leeds), will focus on international commitments, with the three-Test series against Pakistan beginning three days after The Hundred final. England also play a red-ball series at home to New Zealand in June.
Yes. Two spots will be left vacant in each squad for wildcard picks based on performances in the Men's and Women's Vitality Blast competitions later this summer.
The tournament runs from Tuesday July 21 to Sunday August 16, with Sunrisers Leeds Women and MI London Men starting their title defences on day one, at The Kia Oval.
Every match from the men's and women's competitions will be live on Your Site, including the eliminators on Friday August 14 and finals two days later, with every day seeing a women's game precede a men's fixture at the same venue.
Teams play eight group games, meeting six sides once and their local rivals twice.
MI London face Spirit on two occasions, with the other home and away fixtures Sunrisers vs Super Giants, Rockets vs Phoenix, and Brave vs Fire.
The men's and women's sides that top the league phase will qualify directly for the finals, with the sides ending second and third meeting in the eliminator to decide the table-toppers' opponents.
