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

Royal Challengers Bangalore

Retain: Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers

RTM: KL Rahul, Chris Gayle, Yuzvendra Chahal

RCB should be reasonably happy with the option to retain 5 players. There is no doubt that Indian captain Virat Kohli and Mr. 360, AB de Villiers will be retained. It'll be interesting to see if RCB chose to retain Yuzvendra Chahal, or opt to use the RTM card on him. It'll mostly be the latter owing to the fact that they'll have to shell out ?12 crore in order to retain him.

Young KL Rahul missed the whole of last season injured. However, he has been excellent for both RCB and team India, and should get retained. There are two other excellent Indian capped players in the RCB camp - Kedar Jadhav and Pawan Negi.

However, owing to the cap on maximum number of Indian capped players that can be retained, it is unlikely that they will be retained over Yuzvendra Chahal and KL Rahul. Chris Gayle and Shane Watson are the other available options. Gayle has been one of the IPL's biggest icons and we wouldn't be surprised to see the big man back next season in IPL colours.