The existing eight franchises of the Indian Premier League will be allowed to retain four players ahead of the mega auction that is scheduled to take place in January.

A formal announcement is expected shortly but it is understood that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) brass has already had a round of discussion with the franchise officials.

The BCCI on Monday added two new IPL franchises to its fold — Sanjiv Goenka-backed RPSG Ventures Ltd and international investment firm Irelia Company Pte Ltd, an arm of CVC Capital Partners, successfully bid for the Lucknow and Ahmedabad franchises for Rs 7,090 crore and Rs 5,625 crore, respectively.

Given that only five months remain before the start of the next edition of the IPL, the BCCI and the new franchises will have to bat at T20 speed to put their house in order.

Sources told The Telegraph that the franchises would be allowed to retain a maximum of three Indians and two overseas players with the total not exceeding four. If a franchise retains three Indian players, a provision might be kept wherein one has to be uncapped. Similarly there might also be a cap on retaining uncapped players.

There’s a possibility that a franchise may not be allowed to retain only foreign players and a certain number of Indians will have to be retained. No decision has yet been taken on the Right To Match (RTM) card, whereby a franchise can buy an unretained player who played for them in the previous edition for the highest bidding amount at the auction.

Once the existing eight franchises have made their retentions, the two new franchises will be asked to pick three unretained players from the pool ahead of the auction.

While it is almost certain that Mahendra Singh Dhoni will be retained by Chennai Super Kings, the Kolkata Knight Riders may look to keep Shubman Gill, Varun Chakravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer and Sunil Narine/Andre Russell.

No decision has yet been taken on increasing the Rs 90-crore player purse that is earmarked for each franchise.

10-team format

The BCCI announced on Monday that the new format for the 10-team IPL will comprise 74 matches, wherein each team will play seven home and seven away matches. That means there will be 70 league matches and four in the play-off round.

The format will more or less follow the pattern which was used during the 2011 season, which was the last time that the IPL had 10 teams. Based on that, the 10 franchises will be divided into two groups of five each through a random draw.

Each team will play the other teams in the group twice on a home and away basis. It then plays four teams in the other group once and the remaining team twice. To determine which team in the other group will be played once and which twice will be decided by draw of lots.