The auction is done. The trades are filed. The squads are set.
And for the first time in a few years, the honest answer to "who looks best on paper" is not obviously Mumbai Indians or Chennai.
March 28 is the opener. Between now and then, there are approximately forty-seven different predictions circulating on cricket Twitter about who wins the title, most of which will age badly by the first weekend.
Here's a more grounded assessment — what each team actually built, what they were trying to fix, and where the gaps still are.
Kolkata Knight Riders:
The Team That Actually Had a Plan
KKR came into this auction knowing exactly what they needed and spent accordingly.
The headline move was Cameron Green at ₹25.20 crore — a record, and one that raised eyebrows until you think about what they were replacing. Andre Russell is thirty-six. The question of who fills that specific role — elite power hitter, genuine medium-pace option, someone who can win a game from position 7 — had been hanging over KKR for two seasons. Green is the answer, and at that price you're paying for certainty rather than potential.
Matheesha Pathirana at ₹18 crore was the bowling equivalent. Death overs have been KKR's consistent weakness — the phase where matches that looked winnable became matches that weren't. Pathirana is one of the three or four best death bowlers in the world right now. Put him alongside Mustafizur and Harshit Rana and the pace attack is suddenly the most balanced in the competition.
The wicketkeeping situation — Finn Allen and Tim Seifert after the departures of Gurbaz and de Kock — is the one area where the solution feels like a workaround rather than an upgrade. But it's a manageable workaround.
Squad rating: 9.5/10 The most complete roster on paper. The pressure that comes with that label is something KKR have had mixed results managing historically.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru:
Defending Champions Who
Didn't Panic
The most instructive thing about RCB's auction strategy this year is what they didn't do.
They didn't chase big names to prove they were worthy defending champions. They didn't throw money at problems they didn't have. They came in with a clear idea of what the squad needed — not a rebuild, an improvement — and they executed it quietly.
Venkatesh Iyer at ₹7 crore was the headline, and the "homecoming" framing is appropriate — he adds what the batting order genuinely needed: Indian depth alongside Kohli and Rajat Patidar that doesn't collapse the moment the top three are back in the dugout.
Jordan Cox at ₹75 lakh is the move that people are talking about in the rooms where franchise analysts actually sit. English keeper-batter, flexible in the order, available at a price that makes every other franchise slightly annoyed they didn't move faster.
Jacob Duffy as pace backup for Josh Hazlewood rounds off a bowling unit that looks genuinely deeper than in any previous RCB season.
The knock on RCB for eighteen years was that they were one Kohli injury away from a mediocre side. That's no longer obviously true. Whether it stops being true on the field is what March will start to answer.
Squad rating: 8.5/10 Defending champions with a smarter squad than the one that won it. That combination doesn't happen often.
Chennai Super Kings:
The Gamble That Could Define
the Next Decade
For anyone who has followed CSK across their history, this auction was genuinely disorienting.
The team that was built on experience, on the idea that you pay for reliability and let the youngsters prove themselves elsewhere first — that team spent ₹28.40 crore on two uncapped Indian players. ₹14.20 crore each for Prashant Veer and Kartik Sharma. The joint-most expensive uncapped players in IPL history.
This is not a conservative play. This is CSK saying, out loud, that the Dhoni era is transitioning rather than continuing, and that Ruturaj Gaikwad's team needs to look different from MS Dhoni's team.
The Jadeja-Samson trade is the other piece of this. Losing Jadeja — who has been as CSK as yellow jerseys and Chepauk — to Rajasthan Royals and bringing in Sanju Samson at ₹18 crore is a statement about what CSK want to be rather than what they were. Samson is top-order firepower. He's also someone who can grow into a leadership role in a way that matters for the next five seasons.
The risk: ₹28.40 crore on uncapped players is a bet that their scouting is better than their competition's. That might be true. It also might be two expensive mistakes made in the same room.
Squad rating: 8/10 High-risk, high-reward. CSK have earned the benefit of the doubt on roster decisions. But this is the most uncertain they've looked going into a season in a long time.
Delhi Capitals:
Quietly Terrifying
DC don't generate the same auction headlines as KKR or CSK. They also spent this auction making moves that analysts have been quietly calling some of the best value in the room.
David Miller at ₹2 crore is the one that keeps coming up in those conversations. A proven finisher, someone who has won matches at international level in exactly the situations IPL creates — 16 off the last over, two wickets down, unfazed. At that price, every other franchise has to explain why they didn't bid higher.
Ben Duckett and Pathum Nissanka as the opening pair to support KL Rahul gives DC a top order that can genuinely chase anything or set any total.
The ₹8.40 crore on Auqib Nabi Dar is the local-hero story of this auction — a J&K all-rounder who addresses the PowerPlay bowling in a way DC have needed for two seasons. If it works, it's a masterstroke. If it doesn't, it's an expensive lesson in scouting optimism.
Squad rating: 9/10 The dark horse label applies here in the way it should — not "not good enough to win" but "good enough to win and people haven't quite noticed yet."
Rajasthan Royals:
A Specific Bet
Rajasthan's auction can be summarised in one trade: they got Jadeja.
Everything else in their build is context for that move. An elite bowling all-rounder who can anchor the middle overs, create pressure, and contribute runs in a way that changes how opposition captains plan their innings — that's a genuine upgrade to what RR had.
The concern is batting. Not the top order specifically, but the depth — whether there's enough behind the headline names to handle the situations where T20 cricket punishes thin rosters.
Squad rating: 7.5/10 Elite in one dimension. Needs the batting to show up consistently for the bowling to matter.
The Actual Picture
| Team | The Move That Defines Them | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| KKR | Cameron Green ₹25.20cr — covers the Russell gap precisely | 9.5/10 |
| DC | David Miller ₹2cr — best value in the auction | 9/10 |
| RCB | Jordan Cox ₹75L — the steal that makes a deep squad deeper | 8.5/10 |
| CSK | Sanju Samson trade — statement about the next decade | 8/10 |
| RR | Jadeja trade — elite bowling, thin batting | 7.5/10 |
Three things worth remembering before the predictions solidify:
KKR have the best roster on paper. They also had a good roster on paper in 2024, won the title, and then looked average in the following year. Paper means something but not everything.
RCB have never, in eighteen years, gone back-to-back. They also have never, in eighteen years, had a squad this deep. One of those facts is more relevant than the other and we'll find out which.
And CSK's gamble on two uncapped players at record prices will either look like exactly the kind of bold thinking that defines a franchise's era — or like the auction where the most successful team in IPL history briefly forgot how they got there.
March 28. Eleven weeks to find out.
Squad ratings reflect composition and depth analysis at time of publication — February 28, 2026. Final squads subject to injury updates and last-minute changes before the March 28 opener.
