Haris Rauf among marquee players for The Hundred auction

LONDON: Pakistan's right-arm speedster Haris Rauf has been shortlisted among the five overseas marquee cricketers for the highly anticipated players auction of The Hundred 2026, scheduled to be held here on March 12.

Rauf, who was left out of the Pakistan squad which suffered a Super Eights exit from the ongoing ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026, is among the 10 marquee players whose slot will be called first at the auction.

The 10 marquee players are divided into two groups, with Jonny Bairstow, Adil Rashid, James Vince, Jordan Cox and Joe Root slotted in the domestic core, while Aiden Markram, David Miller, Sunil Narine, Daryl Mitchell and Rauf make up the overseas list.

Rauf is one of the only nine Pakistan cricketers to have featured in the Men's Hundred and has 16 wickets in the league, across two seasons for Welsh Fire.

The development came after the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) further trimmed down the longlist of registered men's cricketers to 243 earlier today, which features 14 Pakistan players – Rauf, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Shadab Khan, Usman Tariq, Saim Ayub, Abrar Ahmed, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah, Mohammad Amir, Zaman Khan, Usama Mir, Imad Wasim, Akif Javed and Salman Mirza.

Pakistan's in-form opener Sahibzada Farhan, who piled up a record 383 runs in six innings at the T20 World Cup 2026, is one of the notable absentees from the longlist.

Notably, this year's men's competition of The Hundred will run from July 21 until August 16, coinciding with Pakistan's tour of the Caribbean for a two-match Test series, but their white-ball specialists are expected to be fully available for the league, subject to the No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).

The upcoming edition of The Hundred will be the first featuring private investors, linked with the Indian Premier League (IPL), and thus four franchises, Manchester Super Giants, MI London, Southern Brave and Sunrisers Leeds, partially owned by the Indian investors, will be under scrutiny whether they bid for any Pakistani players at the auction.

The concerns over Pakistan players' selection for The Hundred emerged following a report from the BBC that the four IPL-linked franchises would enforce a "shadow ban" on them.

In response, the ECB and all eight of The Hundred team franchises jointly reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring the competition remains inclusive, welcoming and accessible to all.