What is a trade in the Indian Premier League? How is the players exchange between the teams? This topic has been in the headlines since the end of IPL 2025. Although even earlier, top cricketers like KL Rahul, Ajinkya Rahane and Shikhar Dhawan have been traded from one team to another, but the topic of players’ trade became popular when Mumbai Indians traded with Gujarat Titans for Hardik Pandya before IPL 2024. After all, what is the whole process of trading? Here you will be able to understand this in easy language.

What is trade?

First of all, understand what is trade. Whenever the word ‘trade’ is being used in the IPL, then understand that there is talk of sending a player to another. The 2 teams that have a trade will decide whether they have to replace 2 players with each other or they can also trade the player in the cash deal. Hardik Pandya is a big example of this, for which Mumbai Indians did a cash deal with Gujarat Titans. However, the amount of the deal was not revealed.

If you take an example of a cash deal, Kolkata Knight Riders had given Rs 10 crore to Gujarat Titans to connect Lucky Furganus with them before the 2022 season. At the same time, KKR traded with Delhi Capitals and included Shardul Thakur in his team for Rs 10.75 crore in 2022. On the other hand, if you take the example of swap deal, before IPL 2024, there was a trade of Avesh Khan and Devdutt Padikal between Rajasthan Royals and Lucknow Super Giants. In charge RR, there were Parkal in LSG.

Importance of trading window

Whenever a season of IPL ends, the trading window opens after a month. This trading window remains open until a week before the auction. The trading window is stopped at the auction, but after that it is re -opened until a month before the season starts.

Recently, in IPL 2026, the names of many players have emerged regarding trade. Top players like Sanju Samson and KL Rahul have also been added to CSK and KKR. However, there is no confirmation of any kind yet.

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