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.

The IPL starts just six days after the World Cup final in Mumbai and is scheduled to finish four days before the first Test against Sri Lanka in Cardiff on May 26.

Flower has also indicated he wants his players to play at least one first-class game before Cardiff, rendering it probable the likes of Pietersen will not be available for the IPL run-in.

Availability issues due to international fixture clashes was undoubtedly a big reason England's top stars were largely overlooked.

"The IPL is a tricky subject for us,' conceded Flower, "because the schedules are so heavy and rest is sometimes as important as the hard training that we put our players through.

"The risk of injury and shortening their lifespan, if you like – the IPL is dangerous for that. But I personally don't blame any of the players for wanting to go there and play."

Collingwood believes there should be a special window for IPL."Ideally, that would be fantastic, so that all the players could be involved 100 per cent on a level playing field," he said.

"That's not going to happen probably in the next few years because of the schedules that are coming up. It's great that there were more English players in the auction this time, even if it hasn't worked out hugely for them."

The most expensive player this year was India's Gautam Gambhir, bought for a record $2.4m by Kolkata Knight Riders. Yusuf Pathan ($2.1m), Robin Uthappa ($2.1m) and Rohit Sharma ($2m) also breasted the $2m mark.

Other notable unsold players were Chris Gayle, Sourav Ganguly, Jesse Ryder, Herschelle Gibbs and 41-year-old Brian Lara, who put his name forward despite not having played international cricket since 2007.

Who paid what for players in this year's IPL

(All deals in US dollars)

Chennai Super Kings: Ravichandran Ashwin (850,000), Subramaniam Badrinath (800,000), Doug Bollinger (700,000), Michael Hussey (425,000), Dwayne Bravo (200,000), Wriddhaman Saha (100,000), Scott Styris (200,000), Ben Hilfenhaus (100,000)

Deccan Chargers: JP Duminy (300,000), Shikhar Dhawan (300,000), Kevin Pietersen (650,000), Kumar Sangakkara (700,000), Cameron White (1.1m), Dale Steyn (1.2m)

Delhi Daredevils: Naman Ojha (270,000), James Hopes (350,000), David Warner (750,000), Irfan Pathan (1.9m), Morne Morkel (475,000), Umesh Yadav (750,000)

Kings XI Punjab: Stuart Broad (400,000), Adam Gilchrist (900,000), Dinesh Karthik (900,000), David Hussey (1.4m), Praveen Kumar (800,000), Piyush Chawla (900,000), Dimitri Mascarenhas (100,000)

Kochi: Mahela Jayawardene (1.5m), Ravindra Jadeja (950,000), Shanthakumaran Sreesanth (900,000), RP Singh (500,000), Brendon McCullum (475,000), VVS Laxman (400,000), Parthiv Patel (290,000), Muttiah Muralitharan (1.1m), Brad Hodge (425,000), Owais Shah (200,000)

Kolkata Knight Riders: Gautam Gambhir (2.4m), Yusuf Pathan (2.1m), Jacques Kallis (1.1m), Shakib Al Hasan (425,000), Brad Haddin (325,000), Brett Lee (400,000), Eoin Morgan (350,000), Manoj Tiwary (475,000), Lakshmipathy Balaji (500,000)

Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (2m), Andrew Symonds (850,000), Davey Jacobs (190,000), Munaf Patel (700,000)

Pune Warriors: Robin Uthappa (2.1m), Yuvraj Singh (1.8m), Angelo Mathews (950,000), Graeme Smith (500,000), Tim Paine (270,000), Ashish Nehra (850,000)

Rajasthan Royals: Ross Taylor (1m), Johan Botha (950,000), Rahul Dravid (500,000), Paul Collingwood (250,000)

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Saurabh Tiwary (1.6m), AB de Villiers (1.1m), Zaheer Khan (900,000), Tillakaratne Dilshan (650,000), Daniel Vettori (550,000), Dirk Nannes (650,000), Cheteshwar Pujara (700,000)