Former New Zealand and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) coach Mike Hesson revealed the reasons behind RCB not re-purchasing Yuzvendra Chahal at the IPL 2022 auctions.
Chahal was bought by RCB at the IPL 2014 auctions and he turned out to be a fantastic signing for the Bangalore-based franchise.
The leggie picked 139 wickets in 113 games for RCB. It was his exploits at RCB that earned him a chance in India's white ball teams, and he immediately became India's go-to spinner in both T20Is and ODIs.
Ahead of the IPL 2022 mega auctions, every team was allowed to retain four players, but RCB decided to retain just three - Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, and Mohammed Siraj - as they had a limited purse.
Not only was Chahal not retained by RCB, but he was also not re-purchased by the franchise at the auctions.
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What did Mike Hesson say about RCB not buying Yuzvendra Chahal?
Hesson appeared on an episode of 'UNWIND with Cricket.com', which was uploaded on the official YouTube channel of Cricket.com.
Avanish Hegde, the host of the show, asked Hesson about RCB's thinking behind not re-signing Chahal at the IPL 2022 auctions.
Here's what Hesson explained:
We only retained three players because we wanted to buy back both Harshal Patel and Yuzi at the auction. By only retaining three players, it gave us an extra 4 crore to do that. Probably the thing that I’m frustrated about even now is the fact that he couldn’t make the top two marquee lists despite being one of the best ever in the IPL. That was ridiculous. And the fact that he came in at No.65 in the auction list meant that it was really difficult for us to guarantee that we will get him.
That was something we spent a huge time on at the mock auctions. Harshal was in the first three sets but Yuzi was way down there (set six). We knew through all our mocks that we could get bullied later on. If we saved all our cash and waited for set six, we knew there were five other teams that had more money than us. Suppose we’d let go of all the bowlers before that and still failed to get Yuzi, we would have then been left without a leg-spinner. But yes, we spent hours and hours at the mock auction debating how we could potentially buy Yuzi.
Hesson also revealed that he personally communicated with the leg-spinner after failing to buy him at the auction.
Yuzi was communicated with a huge amount. And I know that because I was the guy at the other end of the phone. I remember ringing Yuzi afterwards and he was upset. It was very difficult to try and explain to him the auction dynamics at that time. He was visibly disinterested, and I don’t blame him. He was an RCBian and he was frustrated. But I can assure everyone that he is well-aware of the issues we were confronted with.
What next for Mike Hesson?
Hesson is currently busy with other cricketing commitments as he is coaching two-time Pakistan Super League (PSL) champions Islamabad United in the ongoing edition of PSL.
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