The Cricket Board-floated Indian Premier League will conduct a second players’ auction next week to enable franchises, that have money left after the initial auction held on February 20, from the five million USD cap, enhance their player base.

“We plan to hold an internal players auction next week with only the team mangement who have money left (in their kitty) to supplement their players,” Lalit Modi, IPL Commissioner and Chairman, said here.

Each franchise was to spend a minimum of USD 3.3 million and a maximum of USD 5 million for buying players put up at the auction as well as paying for the five icon players whose value was fixed at 15 per cent over and above the costliest player bid successfully by that particular franchise.

Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag are the icon players for Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Mohali and Delhi franchises respectively. The first auction held last month saw 79 players snapped up by the eight franchises for sums ranging from USD 4,00,000 (base price) to 1.5 million USD (amount paid for Indian one-day and T20 captain by Chennai franchise India Cements).

Modi admitted that the response for the first auction was a bit above what was expected, while mentioning that it was not extra-ordinary considering it was a pioneering effort towards the dawn of a new era in the game. “To be absolutely honest, the response garnered by the DLF Indian Premier League has been a tad above expectation.

“But I would not state it is out of the ordinary, when we consider that this was a first towards a bold, new cricketing era,” he said.