The Punjab franchise has retained only nine players, that include captain Ravichandran Ashwin, its fiery opening duo Chris Gayle and Lokesh Rahul and its bowling spearheads in Andrew Tye and Mujeen Ur Rahman. The team has meanwhile, traded Marcus Stoinis for local boy Mandeep Singh.

“We have retained all core players. We have ensured that the balance of the squad is good. A lot of factors came in while retaining the players,” said newly-assigned coach Mike Hesson. Yuvraj, who managed just 65 runs at a poor average of 10.38 in the eight games last season, was bought at his base price of Rs 2 crore in the previous auction.

Besides Yuvraj and Finch, left-arm-spinner Axar Patel is another name on the released list of the players. Interestingly. Axar was the only player to be retained by the team that was completely rejigged in 2017. The other released players are Mohit Sharma, Manoj Tiwary, Barinder Sran, Akshdeep Nath, Pradeep Sahoo, Mayank Dagar and Manzoor Dar.

Kings XI Punjab: Marcus Stoinis, Axar Patel, Aaron Finch, Mohit Sharma, Barinder Sran, Yuvraj Singh, Ben Dwarshuis, Manoj Tiwary, Akshdeep Nath, Pardeep Sahu, Mayank Dagar and Manzoor Dar

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Quinton de Kock, Mandeep Singh, Brendon McCullum, Chris Woakes, Corey Anderson and Sarfraz Khan

Mumbai Indians: Mustafizur Rahman, Pat Cummins, Akila Dananjaya, JP Duminy, Saurabh Tiwary, Tajinder Singh, Mohsin Khan, Pradeep Sangwan, MD Nidheesh and Sharad Lumba

Delhi Daredevils: Gautam Gambhir, Jason Roy, Gurkeerat Mann, Glenn Maxwell, Mohammad Shami, Dan Christian, Vijay Shankar, Abhishek Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem, Sayan Ghosh, Liam Plunkett, Junior Dala and Naman Ojha

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Shikhar Dhawan, Sachin Baby, Tanmay Agarwal, Wriddhiman Saha, Chris Jordan, Carlos Brathwaite, Alex Hales, Bipul Sharma and Syed Mehdi Hasan

Chennai Super Kings: Mark Wood, Kanishk Seth and Kshitiz Sharma

Kolkata Knight Riders: Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Johnson, Tom Curran, Cameron Delport, Javon Searles, Ishank Jaggi, Apoorv Wankhade and Vinay Kumar

Rajasthan Royals: Jaydev Unadkat, Anureet Singh, Ankit Sharma, Jatin Saxena, D’Arcy Short and Ben Laughlin