The Indian Premier League franchise owners ended 2015 with a bag of surprises when it came to player retentions.
While some of the costliest buys from the last year’s auction — Yuvraj Singh, who was bought for a whopping Rs. 16 crore by Delhi Daredevils and Dinesh Karthik, signed for Rs. 12.5 crore by Royal Challengers Bangalore — were released by their respective teams, Kings XI Punjab off-loaded George Bailey, its captain from last year.
Sunrisers Hyderabad also sprung a surprise by releasing its three-pronged pace attack, including South Africa pace spearhead Dale Steyn along with the Indian duo of Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar.
Besides Bailey, Kings XI also released Virender Sehwag. The legendary opening batsman recently announced his retirement from international cricket and is set to feature in the Masters Champions League.
Mumbai Indians removed ten players from its roster, including Mumbai Ranji captain Aditya Tare and left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha. The Hyderabad spinner was released by the champion side ahead of the last year’s auction as well but he was signed up at his base price for the 2015 edition.
The fact that 40 players from the suspended Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals are available in the auction for the next two years clearly seems to have played on the franchisees’ mind.
In all, the six other teams released 61 players, with Royal Challengers topping the list with 14 players. Kolkata Knight Riders released K.C. Cariappa, the mystery spinner from Bengaluru who created ripples after being signed for Rs.2.4 crore last year.
Meanwhile, at the end of the first trading window, Royal Challengers have acquired Maharashtra batsman Kedar Jadhav from Delhi Daredevils. The hard-hitting batsman is likely to keep wickets, with RCB deciding to let go of Karthik and Manvinder Bisla.
The released players:Delhi Daredevils (10): Yuvraj Singh, C.M. Gautam, Domnic Joseph Muthuswami, Jaydev Unadkat, K.K. Jiyaz, K.S. Bharat, Manoj Tiwary, Angelo Mathews, Gurinder Sandhu, Marcus Stoinis.
Kings XI Punjab (8): Karanveer Singh, Parvinder Awana, Shivam Sharma, Virender Sehwag, Yogesh Golwalkar, Beuran Hendricks, George Bailey, Thisara Perera.
Kolkata Knight Riders (10): Veer Pratap Singh, Aditya Garhwal, K.C. Cariappa, Sumit Narwal, Vaibhav Rawal, Patrick Cummins, Ryan ten Doeschate, James Neesham, Azhar Mahmood, Johan Botha.
Mumbai Indians (10): Aditya Tare, Abhimanyu Mithun, Pawan Suyal, Pragyan Ojha, Aiden Blizzard, Aaron Finch, Alex Hales, Ben Hilfenhaus, Colin Munro, Josh Hazlewood.
Royal Challengers Bangalore (14): Vijay Zol, Ashok Dinda, Dinesh Karthik, Iqbal Abdullah, Jalaj Saxena, Manvinder Bisla, Sandeep Warrier, Shishir Bhavane, S. Badrinath, Yogesh Takawale, Nic Maddinson, Darren Sammy, Rilee Rossouw, Sean Abbott.
Sunrisers Hyderabad (9): Chama Milind, Hanuma Vihari, Ishant Sharma, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Prasanth Padmanabhan, Praveen Kumar, Dale Steyn, Kevin Pietersen, Ravi Bopara.
