Yorkshire relieved as players are snubbed in lucrative IPL auctions

England pace bowlers Tim Bresnan and Ajmal Shahzad, former England pace bowler Ryan Sidebottom, ex-England all-rounder Anthony McGrath, Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale and opening batsman Adam Lyth all wanted to play in the Twenty20 tournament that clashes with the opening seven weeks of the county season.

The players would have missed up to six County Championship and five Clydesdale Bank 40 matches if selected, leaving the club in a serious predicament.

But they were deemed surplus to requirements by the 10 IPL franchises and will now be available to represent Yorkshire – although Bresnan and Shahzad could still be wanted for the Test series against Sri Lanka that starts in May.

The Yorkshire players' failure to attract the big bucks is a welcome development for the club's board, who decided not to stand in their way for fear of upsetting them.

Other counties have previously let players go to IPL and Yorkshire did not want to cause festering resentment by putting their foot down.

Although publicly keen to support the players' IPL ambitions, the Yorkshire hierarchy will be privately delighted they can now plan for the new season without having to worry about the absence of key performers.

Even with a full complement of players, Yorkshire will do well to equal – never mind eclipse – their sterling efforts under Gale last season, when they finished third in the Championship and reached the CB40 semi-finals, with Yorkshire reacting to the departure of prolific South African batsman Jacques Rudolph by signing a strike bowler in Sidebottom.

The IPL, which runs from April 8 (the opening day of Yorkshire's season) to May 22, puts English players in something of an invidious position due to its location in an already congested international calendar.

On the one hand, players naturally want the big money on offer during a sporting career that is short; on the other, they do not want to leave their counties in the lurch and would prefer IPL to be staged outside the English season.

As it turned out, English players fared poorly at the latest auction, which attracted a total spend of $80.28m.

Only a handful of the 125 players sold were English, with the Yorkshire six among 228 unsold players.

The most expensive English cricketer was Kevin Pietersen, for whom Deccan Chargers paid a cut-price $650,000 (418,000).

Pietersen was the joint-hottest property at the 2009 auction along with England team-mate Andrew Flintoff, fetching a then-record $1.6m.

Stuart Broad was bought by Kings XI Punjab for $400,000, Eoin Morgan by Kolkata Knight Riders for $350,000 and Paul Collingwood by Rajasthan Royals for $250,000.

But neither Graeme Swann nor James Anderson could draw their base price of $400,000, while Matt Prior and Luke Wright also missed out.

Former Yorkshire batsman Michael Lumb was signed for $80,000 by Deccan Chargers, while Owais Shah was bought for $200,000 by Kochi and Somerset's Alfonso Thomas recruited for $100,000 by Pune Warriors.

The non-selection of the majority of England's Ashes and Twenty20 World Cup-winning heroes will be music to the ears of England head coach Andy Flower, who warned over the weekend the IPL is "dangerous" as far as the future of England's cricket is concerned.

Victory in this summer's Test series against Sri Lanka and India would lift England to second in the world rankings and Flower has admitted the additional workload caused by IPL can only hinder his plans.