Ben Stokes set to follow England captain Joe Root by sitting out IPL auction next month

Ben Stokes is set to join his England Test captain Joe Root in sitting out this year’s IPL auction.

Stokes was not retained by Rajasthan Royals, for whom he played since being picked up for a deal worth up to £1.7million in the 2018 auction. Before that, he played for the now-defunct Rising Pune Supergiant, where he won the tournament’s coveted Most Valuable Player award.

But Stokes will sit out this year’s tournament, which will feature 10 teams for the first time and be preceded by a mega-auction in which there are plenty of spaces to fill.

The auction for the 15th edition of the IPL takes place on February 12 but players have to enter themselves imminently. While Stokes is yet to confirm that he will sit out, Standard Sport understands his name is unlikely to be on the list.

Stokes has had a tumultuous time over the last couple of years, with the death of his father Ged 13 months ago preceding a long break in 2021 to prioritise his mental health and fix a finger badly broken at the IPL.

Root said he had decided not to enter the auction because he wanted to throw “all my energy” into captaining the Test team, adding: “I’ll keep sacrificing as much as I can because I care so much about Test cricket in our country”.

Stokes, more of a T20 regular, would have been more likely to pick up an IPL deal than Root. Sitting out represents a significant financial sacrifice but should also allow him some time off to mentally refresh between England’s tour of the Caribbean in March and the international summer in June.

England’s recent Test players who look set to enter include Jonny Bairstow, Ollie Pope, Sam Billings and Mark Wood, who admitted before the Hobart Test that he was weighing up his involvement.

Among English players, only Moeen Ali (who has retired from Tests) and Jos Buttler were retained by their franchises, Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan respectively.

Last summer, England players who were at the IPL were allowed to sit out the early-season Tests against New Zealand – a late addition to the fixture list to make up a financial shortfall caused by Covid-19 – following a period of quarantine and as part of the well-meaning but poorly-executed rest and rotation policy that disrupted Root’s team’s year.