The last time Richard Madley was in the newspapers for a cricket auction, he was handling the sale of a collection of ties and saucy seaside postcards once owned by Brian Johnston. Today's auction is rather less frivolous. When Madley, a lifelong Glamorgan supporter, starts work in the ballroom of the Oberoi Hilton in Bombay, $40million (about £20million) will be at stake.

Madley, an auctioneer with Dreweatts, the British firm, will handle today's sale of 79 cricketers to the eight franchises in the Indian Premier League (IPL), the new Twenty20 competition that will start on April 18, and anticipation has become feverish.

“I've just been mobbed outside the hotel,” Madley said yesterday. “They say that cricket is a religion here, but it appears to be a bit more than that.”

The mob will be shut out of the auction room when bidding starts at 11am, local time. “Each of the team's owners can bring in five advisers, including the coach,” Madley said. “There will also be a number of university professors, who are apparently experts in the psychology of auctions and will advise the owners on how their rivals are reacting.”

The cricketers have been divided into groups and their names will be drawn one by one from a velvet bag. Madley will open the bidding for each player from a specified reserve price. That money, starting at $200,000, goes as an annual wage to the players. The franchises can spend a maximum of $5million on their squads.

“First, there will be the marquee players, the really big names, who have been divided into two groups of six,” Madley said. “These include Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Glenn McGrath and Shoaib Akhtar, but the one that everyone appears to want is Mahendra Singh Dhoni.”

Certain Indian “icons”, such as Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, have been reserved for the franchises from their home cities and are guaranteed to be paid 15 per cent more than the next highest at their club. But since Ranchi, the birthplace of Dhoni, the India wicketkeeper and one-day captain, does not have a franchise, he is a free agent and bidding for the explosive batsman will be frenetic.

“It starts at $400,000 and, judging by the hysteria, he could be bought for double that,” Madley said. Adam Gilchrist, the Australia wicketkeeper, is another player likely to attract the biggest bids.

After the marquee players, the next bag will contain players who have limited availability and thus will receive only a pro-rata payment. These include half a dozen Australia players, including Ricky Ponting and Brett Lee, who have international obligations that clash with the IPL.

It was announced yesterday that Cricket Australia will send a security team to Pakistan to assess whether their proposed tour to the country can go ahead next month. It is likely to be compressed from the planned 48 days to 30, but may still coincide with the start of the IPL, while Australia's tour to the West Indies in May is due to clash with the end of the competition.

The remainder of the auction will deal with, in order, wicketkeepers, bowlers and batsmen. “There will have to be tactical bidding, given the salary cap,” Madley said. “Teams will not want to blow all their money on a Warne or McGrath and find they have nothing left for a top batsman.”

To allow the owners to consider the options as the auction progresses, there will be a break between each group of lots. “This will be a marathon,” Madley said. “Normally I'd get through 79 lots in half an hour, but we are expecting this to last six hours.”

Should a player not reach his reserve price, he will be put aside for a secondary auction.

Madley is a second-generation auctioneer, who started selling from a stepladder for his father's house sales 30 years ago and specialises in oriental carpets. In 1996, he handled the auction for £23,000 of a bat used by Don Bradman, which shattered the world record of £1,300 for a bat used by Jack Hobbs. Madley keeps wicket for Lacock second XI in the seventh division of the Wiltshire League and was not expecting any of the franchises to bid for his services.

Money talks

$5 million
Maximum amount the eight Indian Premier League franchises can each spend on their squads

$2 million
Prize-money for the winners of the inaugural competition

$50 million
Amount paid by an Indian property developer for five-year title sponsorship rights

$1 billion
Amount paid by WSG/Sony for ten-year broadcast rights

45
Number of days that the first IPL tournament will last

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