What is the Hundred auction and how does it work?

The Hundred will hold its first auction on Wednesday and Thursday as teams look to build their squads for the 2026 season.

The eight men's and women's franchises previously conducted drafts to develop their rosters - but this campaign the competition is switching to an auction.

In the auction, players will be listed one by one to the eight teams, with the highest bidder signing them for the upcoming season.

The women's auction will take place first on Wednesday, with the men's hosted a day later.

Not all players will be selected via the auction, with some teams already making up to four selections prior to the start of the upcoming auctions.

The move to an auction mirrors a range of franchise leagues around world cricket, most notably the Indian Premier League.

A number of IPL teams have become investors in Hundred franchises before this season.

There will be a live text on the BBC Sport website and app with some highlights from the auction plus clips of some of the big names at the event.

Before the auction, men's and women's teams could choose a maximum of four players each. They are all either overseas players or centrally contracted to England, with a maximum of three being new signings and the other being retained from last year's squad.

The auction itself is split into three sections; hero players, ranked players and nominated players.

Hero players are those most selected by teams ahead of the auction as potential signings, with the top 50 grouped into sets based on their role in the team.

Teams then have the chance to bid on those players in the auction with the highest bidder winning that player.

Following the conclusion of the hero player auction, teams will get to nominate 25 players each and the most popular from those nominations will be classed as ranked players.

These can consist of any players from the auction longlist, including hero players who were not signed in the first round.

The final round, known as nominated players, starts with a random draw to determine the order in which teams get to select unsigned players.

After a team has selected an unsigned player, they will be auctioned as per the earlier rounds. But if no other team bids for them, they will sign for the team they were initially selected by.

The auction will conclude when all eight teams have finalised their squads.

Barring those already picked via the pre-auction selections and retentions, all players have been placed onto a longlist, consisting of approximately 200 players each for the men's and women's auction.

England white ball captains Harry Brook and Nat Sciver-Brunt are among the big names to have been already picked up prior to the auction, as are Jacob Bethell, Jofra Archer and Will Jacks who all featured in England's run to the semi-finals of the men's T20 World Cup.

Big names on the long-list for the upcoming auction include England's all-time leading Test run scorer Joe Root and Pakistan pace bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi.

The women's auction includes stars such as England international spinner Sarah Glenn, Australia wicketkeeper Beth Mooney and England wicketkeeper Amy Jones.

While the auction will conclude when all teams have full squads, all eight teams will leave two spots available for wildcard selections, based on performances in the Vitality Blast to be picked later this year.

Following significant investment coming into the Hundred this, the salary cap and amount that players can earn has significantly increased.

For the construction of their full teams, men's squads have a salary cap of £2.05m and women's sides have £880,000.

However, a big chunk of the cap has already been allocated by teams to their pre-auction signings.

Men's teams will have spent £850,000 if they made three pre-auction signings and £950,000 if they made four pre-auction signings.

For women's teams, £310,000 has been spent by teams if they made three pre-auction signings, with £360,000 spent on four pre-auction signings.

Among those on this year's longlist is former England pace bowler Tymal Mills.

Mills, 33, is the leading wicket-taker in the men's competition, featuring in all five seasons for the Southern Brave.

In 2017, Mills was picked up in the IPL draft by Royal Challengers Bangalore for 1200 Lakh, which works out at just under £1m and made him the second most expensive overseas signing that year behind current England men's Test captain, Ben Stokes.

"That was life-changing money really, and at a time where I didn't really have any money at all, it came," Mills told BBC Sport.

"To sit and watch that on TV unfold, I was in the UAE at the time, and just watched your head pop up on the screen and then to see guys in a room lifting a paddle and bidding for you was very surreal.

"That first IPL experience was amazing."

Like many seasoned franchise cricketers, Mills has experienced both the highs of going for big money and the lows of being unsigned.

"I've had a lot of other drafts and auctions since then that haven't gone my way," Mills added.

"You very rarely go into things with a guarantee. I've had lots of auctions and drafts through the years where you get told, maybe a team owner or a coach says we're going to pick you at this category or we're going bid for you and then things change and that doesn't transpire.

"I've learned to not put too much stock into that because you know you can be left disappointed. Once the draft or the auction itself starts and the bidding starts and the dynamics can quickly change so you've got to hope that things don't go against you in terms of timing and other things that could impact your success at the auction."

This article is the latest from BBC Sport's Ask Me Anything team.