Have you ever thought about how dream squads are built by IPL teams? 10Sports brings you behind the scenes of the most thrilling event in cricket: the IPL auctions. Talent scouting through all such last-minute bidding wars keeps an eye on the hidden tactics that the teams use to form winning combinations.

The Art of Player Scouting

Before the hammer falls at auction, the teams are already busy identifying possible stars. 10Sports got to know that franchises have a network of scouts throughout the country-international innings, even on social media, looking for the next upcoming Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma.

Royal Challengers Bangalore and others often find such worthies. In such cases, they even go beyond that and develop sophisticated analytics to predict a player's contribution to the team. There are also sites that give us IPL 2025 predictions; they will be mentioned later in this piece. Back to the track: individual brilliance will not do; it is necessary to find the perfect piece of the puzzle for strategy within the team.

The War Room Tactics

On the auction day, there is a hive of activity within the war room of each franchise. 10Sports sources reveal that teams do not use one plan but indeed have several:

The Decoy Bidding: Teams could just start bidding high on players they do not really want.
The Sleeper Pick: Identifying undervalued players who could have game-changing abilities.
The Star Power Play: The full-fang for a marquee player gives the impression that the whole team's getting involved in something big.

Did you know that some teams even go as far as doing psychological profiling on their prospective players just to make sure that their personalities will really fit in well with their existing squad?

The Last-Minute Gambit

As the auction clock winds down, the tension rallies to a fever pitch. This is the time when abstruse drama takes place, as insiders at 10Sports state. A team's entire strategy may very well be suddenly revised at this very last minute, all in favour of a gut bid.

Rajasthan Royals once snatched a vital player in the last few moments, beating others who had thought all was done. It is this unpredictability that makes the IPL auction as exciting as the last-ball finish in a live cricket match.

Conclusion

The IPL auction is not just about forming teams at the auction, but also about the future of cricket. A successful auction strategy can thus take players from anonymity to superstardom within a few hours and transform the worst teams into champions.

For IPL2025, the first thing that is clear is that the auction room is where this season's first 'match' is really won or lost. Who, then, will be the next auction guru? Only time will tell, but 10Sports will be there to capture it all!

10Sports Reveals: Secret Playbook of IPL Auction Strategies

Jul 19, 20252 min read