Chennai Super Kings' Doug Bollinger was one of the surprise names in the list of released playersIn these difficult times for the world economy, it comes as no surprise that Indian Premier League teams have decided to reduce their total salary bills as soon as they were given the opportunity by the governing council.

The ruling body of the billion dollar league had given each franchise until Wednesday to send in a list of the players they wanted to retain for the sixth season next year.

According to the list of retained players released by the IPL on Thursday, the teams have shown the tendency to release a lot of fringe foreign players and Indians with inflated salaries. The released players go back into the auction pool and can be bought again at a later date in 2013.

In total, 94 players have been released by the nine teams, with Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals letting go of 15 each, the largest number, while champions Kolkata Knight Riders bade goodbye to just four.

Mumbai Indians retained the most number of players with 27, while Pune Warriors India retained 24 and Royal Challengers Bangalore 20. The Sun TV group, which recently bought the rights to the disbanded Hyderabad franchise, decided to keep 20 of the 32 players (barring the banned TP Sudhindra) from the then-Deccan Chargers’ rolls last year.

The salary cap for next season has been set at $ 12.5 million, and some of the teams like Hyderabad ($ 7million), Kings XI Punjab ($ 7.2m) and Rajasthan ($ 8.4m) have cleared up enough cap space to capture a big fish or two.

Some of the names released, like Mumbai Indians’ Dwayne Smith and Pune Warriors India’s Michael Clarke, were expected, since they had signed on as replacement players on one-year deals.

But some of the names were surprises — Doug Bollinger (Chennai), Graeme Smith (Pune), Daniel Christian (Hyderabad), Johan Botha (Rajasthan) and Mumbai’s Thisara Perera and Richard Levi — given their respective penchants for the format.

Bollinger ($ 700,000) has been a key part of Chennai’s success over the last few years, and given the team’s attempts to keep a continuity in its squad, it does seem odd that he has been released.

However, he did play only six games during the IPL last season, and proved expensive.

In Smith’s ($ 500,000) case, it was a combination of the fact that he doesn’t play the T20 format internationally any more, and that he didn’t play a single game last season due to injury. Fellow South African Botha is the highest-paid player to be released, with the Royals deciding his off-spin bowling and decent batting weren’t enough for $ 950,000.

Christian, too, came at a high price ($ 900,000) to the Hyderabad-based team, but didn’t live up to the hype surrounding his all-round skills. Perera ($ 650,000) was an underutilised all-rounder, while hard-hitting South African Levi ($ 50,000) was a major flop.

As expected, Punjab have released Stuart Broad, whom they bought at the 2011 auction for $ 400,000, since he didn’t play a single game for them over the last two seasons due to injuries and England’s international schedule.

Among the Indian players released, apart from the local uncapped talent is all-rounder Abhishek Nayar (Punjab), who was bought for $ 800,000 when he was a fringe player for the national side. Similarly, Venugopal Rao, who was one of the few quality batsmen bought by Delhi initially before they went in for an overhaul last year, perhaps paid the price for his $ 700,000 salary.

SQUADS: RETAINED AND RELEASED PLAYERS:

Hyderabad: Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Akash Bhandari, Akshath Reddy, Amit Mishra, Anand Rajan, Ankit Sharma, Ashish Reddy, Bharat Chipli, Biplab Samantray, Cameron White, Chris Lynn, Dale Steyn, Ravi Teja, Ishant Sharma, JP Duminy, Rusty Theron, Kumar Sangakkara, Parthiv Patel, Shikhar Dhawan, Veer Pratap Singh.

Released players: T Atchuta Rao, Darren Bravo, Daniel Christian, Kedar Devdhar, Manpreet Gony, Daniel Harris, Ishank Jaggi, Tanmay Mishra, Syed Quadri, Sneha Kishore, Sunny Sohal, Tanmay Srivastava, Arjun Yadav.

Salary Cap Spent: $5,496,304
Balance of Salary Cap: $7,003,696


Chennai Super Kings: Albie Morkel, Ben Hilfenhaus, Dwayne Bravo, Faf du Plessis, Michael Hussey, MS Dhoni, M Vijay, Nuwan Kulasekara, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shadab Jakati, S Anirudha, S Badrinath, Suresh Raina, Wriddhiman Saha.

Released players: George Bailey, Doug Bollinger, Joginder Sharma, Suraj Randiv, Yo Mahesh, Abhinav Mukund, Scott Styris, Sudeep Tyagi, K Vasudevadas, G Vignesh.

Salary Cap Spent: $9,325,435
Balance of Salary Cap: $3,174,565


Delhi Daredevils: Ajit Agarkar, Andre Russell, David Warner, Irfan Pathan, Kevin Pietersen, Mahela Jayawardene, Manpreet Juneja, Morne Morkel, Naman Ojha, Pawan Negi, Roelof van der Merwe, Ross Taylor, Shabaz Nadeem, Umesh Yadav, Unmukt Chand, Varun Aaron, Virender Sehwag, Yogesh Nagar.

Released players: Puneet Bisht, Robin Bist, Gulam Bodi, Doug Bracewell, Aaron Finch, Sunny Gupta, Glenn Maxwell, Prashant Naik, Kuldeep Raval, Aavishkar Salvi, Venugopal Rao, Vikas Mishra, Tejashwi Yadav, Zafir Patel.

Salary Cap Spent: $10,824,891
Balance of Salary Cap: $1,675,109


Kings XI Punjab: Adam Gilchrist, Azhar Mahmood, Bharghav Butt, Bipul Sharma, David Hussey, David Miller, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Gurkeerat Mansingh, Harmeet Singh Bansal, Mandeep Singh, Nitin Saini, Parvinder Awana, Paul Valthaty, Piyush Chawla, Praveen Kumar, R Sathish, Shaun Marsh, Siddharth Chitnis, Sunny Singh.

Released players: Kyle Abbott, Love Ablish, Amit Yadav, Ben Cutting, Paras Dogra, James Faulkner, Ryan Harris, Vikramjeet Malik, Abhishek Nayar, Ramesh Powar, Nathan Rimmington, Nitin Saini, Stuart Broad.

Salary Cap Spent: $5,280,435
Balance of Salary Cap: $7,219,565


Kolkata Knight Riders: Brad Haddin, Brendon McCullum, Brett Lee, Debabrata Das, Eoin Morgan, Gautam Gambhir, Iqbal Abdulla, Jacques Kallis, James Pattinson, L Balaji, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Manoj Tiwary, Manvinder Bisla, Marchant de Lange, Pradeep Sangwan, Rajat Bhatia, Ryan ten Doeschate, Sarabjit Singh Ladda, Shakib Al Hasan, Shami Ahmed, Sunil Narine, Yusuf Pathan.

Released players: Chirag Jani, Sanju Samson, Iresh Saxena, Jaydev Unadkat.

Salary Cap Spent: $10,366,304
Balance of Salary Cap: $2,133,696


Mumbai Indians: Abu Nechim Ahmed, Aditya Tare, Aiden Blizzard, Ambati Rayudu, Amitoze Singh, Apporv Wankhade, Dhawal Kulkarni, Dinesh Karthik, Harbhajan Singh, Herschelle Gibbs, James Franklin, Kieron Pollard, Kuldeep Yadav, Lasith Malinga, Mitchell Johnson, Munaf Patel, Pawan Suyal, Pragyan Ojha, Rahul Shukla, Robin Peterson, Rohit Sharma, RP Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, Suryakumar Yadav, Sushant Marathe, T Suman, Yuzvendra Singh Chahal.

Released players: Davy Jacobs, Richard Levi, Clint McKay, Sujit Nayak, Thisara Perera, Jaydev Shah.

Salary Cap Spent: $10,691,739
Balance of Salary Cap: $1,808,261


Pune Warriors: Alfonso Thomas, Ali Murtaza, Angelo Mathews, Anustup Majumdar, Ashish Nehra, Ashok Dinda, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Dheeraj Jadhav, Eklavya Dwivedi, Harpreet Singh Krishnakant Upadhyay, Luke Wright, Mahesh Rawat, Manish Pandey, Marlon Samuels, Mitchell Marsh Mithun Manhas, Murali Kartik, Rahul Sharma, Raiphi Gomez, Robin Uthappa, Shrikant Wagh, Wayne Parnell, Yuvraj Singh.

Released players: Sourav Ganguly, Michael Clarke, Callum Ferguson, Kamran Khan, Harshad Khadiwale, Nathan McCullum, Mohnish Mishra, Sachin Rana, Jesse Ryder, Graeme Smith, Steven Smith, Tamim Iqbal, James Hopes.

Salary Cap Spent: $8,537,174
Balance of Salary Cap: $3,962,826


Rajasthan Royals: Ajinkya Rahane, Ajit Chandila, Ankeet Chavan, Ashok Menaria, Brad Hodge, Brad Hogg, Kevon Cooper, Rahul Dravid, S Sreesanth, Shane Watson, Shaun Tait, Shreevats Goswami, Siddharth Trivedi, Stuart Binny.

Released players: Johan Botha, Deepak Chahar, Dinesh Chandimal, Aakash Chopra, Paul Collingwood, Aditya Dole, Samad Fallah, Faiz Fazal, Sumit Narwal, Pankaj Singh, Amit Paunikar, Abhishek Raut, Owais Shah, Pinal Shah, Amit Singh, Dishant Yagnik.

Salary Cap Spent: $4,076,739
Balance of Salary Cap: $8,423,261


Royal Challengers Bangalore: AB De Villiers, Abhimanyu Mithun, Andrew McDonald, Arun Karthik, Cheteshwar Pujara, Chris Gayle, Daniel Vettori, Harshal Patel, KP Appanna, Karun Nair, Mayank Agarwal, Muttiah Muralitharan, Vinay Kumar, S Aravind, Saurabh Tiwary, Syed Mohammad, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Vijay Zol, Virat Kohli, Zaheer Khan.

Released players: Raju Bhatkal, CM Gautam, Mohammad Kaif, Abrar Kazi, Charl Langeveldt, Dirk Nannes, Ryan Ninan, Prashanth Parameswaran, Asad Pathan, Luke Pomersbach, Rilee Rossouw, S Thiyagarajan.

Salary Cap Spent: $9,712,609
Balance of Salary Cap: $2,787,391