Indian Premier League 2018: Players likely to be retained by each franchisee

Mumbai Indians

Retain: Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah

RTM: Krunal Pandya, Jos Buttler

Will Hardik Pandya stay at MI, or will he chose to be a part of the auctions?

Having won 3 out of the last 5 seasons, the defending champions are going to have a hard time picking out just 5 players from their squad of umpteen superstars.

The retention should be fairly straightforward for the Mumbai Indians. They might be the only team to go in to the auctions with three players retained, as no other team have three players who are worth a total of ?31 crores.

Captain and explosive batsman Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, who is arguably the best all-rounder India have at present, and death-overs specialist Jasprit Bumrah could walk right into any team, and would form a solid core with a batsman, an all-rounder and a bowler. There are, however, rumours floating around that Hardik Pandya would like to be part of the auctions.

Utilizing the RTM cards would be way trickier for the star-studded MI, with the likes of Kieron Pollard, Lasith Malinga, Harbhajan Singh, Ambati Rayudu, Parthiv Patel and Jos Buttler available. However, with MI's yesteryear stars Pollard, Malinga, Bhajji, Parthiv Patel and Rayudu all above 30, my money is on MI using their RTM on the relatively younger, explosive wicket keeper-batsman Jos Buttler.

The other Pandya, Krunal, who was the man of the match in last year's final, was excellent last season with both bat and bal, and should be the other RTM pick owing to his uncapped tag.