Shaun Marsh, son of the Aussie opener Goeff Marsh, has just been signed up by Priety Zinta's Mohali franchise for the IPL.

Its been quite a week for the young Aussie - after being named in the ODI squad for the Windies tour, earlier today he received his first contract from Cricket Australia.

Whats interesting is that Shaun Marsh joins Luke Pomersbach in the Mohali team - the 2 Western Australians were suspended earlier this season for a late night drinking binge by WA. One can expect some late nights then in and around Punjab once the IPL kicks off.

Marsh and Pomersbach will have to be wary though as Mohali is coached by Western Australia coach Tom Moody who has Trevor Penney as his assistant, also his assistant at WA.

Dominic Thornely, another successful Australian domestic cricketer, was also lapped up today by the Mumbai Indians, who had earlier signed on the Western Australian wicket keeper Luke Ronchi.

Glenn McGrath is one of the first international cricketers to arrive in India for the IPL and has already started training with the Delhi Daredevils. Delhi's coach, the Victorian Greg Shipperd, has also arrived in India and held the team's first training session yesterday.

Aussies have definitely taken the IPL by storm.

• Shane Warne is the only non-Indian captain the IPL has.
  
• 4 of the 8 IPL coaches are Australian - John Buchanan, Tom Moody, Greg Shipperd, and Shane Warne.
  
• Australia is the only country from where the largest pool of domestic cricketers have signed on with the IPL - those mentioned above along with the Victorians David Hussey and Cameron White. There are a couple of others that I'm forgetting right now.

Despite such an Aussie dominance in the IPL, Uncle J Rod refuses to believe that it will be a success. Forget Aussie dominance Uncle J, they've got Victorians here as well.


The IPL kicks off in 9 days.

The teams are ready; they've all got their names, their captains, their coaches, their players, their multi colored uniforms; the players have started arriving, training sessions have started, the schedule is in place, and arragements for the opening ceremony are being finalised !!

It sure will be quite an extravaganza !!!

18 International players and 16 Indian U19 players are set to be allocated to IPL franchises tomorrow in what will be a 2nd auction for the international players and draft picks for the U19 players.

Jaipur aka Rajhasthan Royals spent only $2.9 million at the 1st auction, effectively leaving them $2.1 million for tomorrow, and thus are the best placed team to pick up more stars as the IPL Player Auction Part 2 gets underway.

The other teams are left with very little money totaling to a few 100 thousand dollars thus they may not be able to pick up more than 1 international player each at the most.

Misbah Ul Haq, who was arguably one of the best batsmen in last year's T20 World Cup, looks to me as the biggest draw at tomorrow's auction. I reckon if he was there in the first one, he would have been the highest priced Pakistani player but strangely he was missing.

Considering that Bangalore have $374,000 left in their kitty, which is the highest balance after Jaipur's, I see Shane Warne's Royal team picking Misbah up. If they do at a relatively low $400,000 or so, he might end up being the bargain of the tournament -a tag currently associated with Ricky Ponting.

The other players up for grabs include Mohd. Yousuf and Ashwell Prince who no one was interested in the last time round in addition to new entries:

Pakistan: Mohammad Hafeez
Australia: Shane Watson, Brad Hodge, James Hopes, Luke Pomersbach
SriLanka: Prassanna Jayawardene
New Zealand: Ross Taylor, Peter Fulton, Jamie How, Jeetan Patel, Chris Martin, Kyle Mills, James Franklin
Bangladesh: Mohammad Ashraful, Mashrafe Murtaza

I wonder if anyone will buy Shane Watson - he'll probaby turn up to play and get a stomach bug or something. I don't see how any of the franchises could be interested in any of these names. They have spent millions on big names in the first auction that all these names look like minions.

Misbah and James Hopes will most likely generate the most interest tomorrow. Lets wait and see how much the franchises dish out for these players. Pomersbach, whose big in the Aussie domestic T20 scene, could also be a big draw.

For the U19 players the BCCI have restricted their salary at $30,000 and 2 players each will be alotted to the 8 teams through draft picks. Since there are no seedings for the teams yet, they will be numbered 1-8 randomly, and select the players in order. Team number 8 will get the 8th and 9th pick, while team number 1 will get the first and last pick, and so on.

Someone is going pick up the hammer again tomorrow and some more cricketers are going to be dollar rich.

How much do u think Misbah will go for?