Hardik was the talk of the town on November 26 as it was the final day for all 10 Indian Premier League teams to officially announce their list of released and retained players ahead of the IPL 2024 auction.
The mini-auction is set to take part on December 19 out of India for the first time in history. The event will take place at the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai.
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On the deadline day, Gujarat Titans had initially named their then-skipper Hardik Pandya in their list of retained players. But as the day progressed it became clear that Mumbai Indians would re-sign the all-rounder in a direct cash transaction with GT.
A day later, MI officially announced that Pandya had returned to his former franchisee and in return, the Mukesh Ambani-owned team paid INR 15 crores to GT in a trade deal.
MI also made space in their team and increased their purse by sending Cameron Green to Royal Challengers Bangalore in exchange for INR 17.5 crores cash.
While MI fans were absolutely elated to welcome their hero back to the team, the deal did not go down well with former Kolkata Knight Riders team director Joy Bhattacharjya who completely dismissed the idea of teams getting involved in trades outside of the auction.
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What did former KKR team director say about Hardik Pandya joining Mumbai Indians?
Speaking on Oaktree Sports YouTube channel, Bhattacharjya said, I do not think it is a great idea for the tournament because something similar almost happened in 2010. Ravindra Jadeja did not play a particular season because he wanted to move on and the franchise had signed him. He had said that he doesn’t want to play for Rajasthan Royals anymore and so was banned for a year because they said that you cannot break the system.
If a player suddenly says that, take me from the auction but I do not want to play for you…and once you start encouraging this trend then it will not be a good idea to go down that road. That is why it was stopped in 2010. But in 2023, you have allowed this to happen with a big player. The truth of this is once you start allowing it, players will realise that if they can kick up enough of a fuss, the franchise will leave them…I don’t think this is a good precedent for the league.
He added,
Gujarat had two options. They could have allowed him to leave, make some money out of trade and get some money for the organisation which is enough to retain another big-name player. The other option is with Hardik saying that he wants to leave, I would get one season of mediocre performance from him. Then he will leave and I will get nothing from it. Gujarat hence couldn’t have made any other choices given the circumstances.
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