Although there are too many uncertainties around the venue and schedule of this year’s edition of the Indian Premier League, the BCCI has already announced that a mini-auction will take place on February 18. Before the board made public the schedule of the auction where franchises will be in the pursuit of fine-tuning their squads, franchises were given a window where they could seek negotiations with each other in order to transfer resources at their disposal.
The window for trading players into one franchise to another ended on February 11, but only three players went through the process. The window for reading players before the auction every year allows players and especially franchises to make decisions based on the assessment of their financial resources and overall balance of tier squads.
This year though, there were not many takers for the policy as only three players went through the process of transition which included two players of Indian origin and one overseas player.
Here are the three players
Robin Uthappa had a terrible season last year where he struggled to find timing whale batting at down the order for the Rajasthan Royals and has been traded by the Chennai Super Kings who really struggled with their batting at the top of the order.
The right-hander has been a seasoned campaigner in IPL and the duo of MS Dhoni and Stephen Fleming has played a punt on him to go berserk at the top of the order.
In the last season, the Royals team management was spoilt for choices among batsmen who could bat at the top of the order where Uthappa has flourished as a batsman in the history of IPL, and the season ended up being his worst performance in this decade of the league.
He could muster only 196 runs from 12 games and his days in the Royals were numbered. The management handed him an opportunity to open the batting in the latter part of the season last year and he showed sparks of his brilliance, but could not capitalise on starts.
He was released by the Kolkata Knight Riders franchise before the auction for the last season of IPL and the Royals had bought his services for Rs 3 crore and now he will be don the yellow jersey in the upcoming edition after a brief innings in pink jersey with the Royals.
Daniel Sams was released by the Delhi Capitals before the trading window ended on February 11 and the Royal Challengers Bangalore has decided to bank upon his all-round abilities for the upcoming edition of IPL.
Sams is an impressive young left-arm seamer from Australia who has many tricks up his sleeve for the shortest form of the game and was the highest wicket-taker in the 2019 edition of the Big Bash League in Australia. However, he had gone unsold in the auction last year before England’s Jason Roy opted out of the tournament and he was roped in as his replacement by the Capitals.
He could make his way into the playing XI only on three instances and returned with average numbers and hence the move by Capitals to let him go should not come as a surprise to both him and his fans.
He has been picked up by the Royal Challengers and Kohli along with Mike Hesson must have gone on the back of his exploits against India in the T20 series held earlier last year.
Harshal Patel has been around in the IPL for a very long time now but his inconsistency and lack of X-factor has not helped him in finding any permanent home in the tournament. He had made his IPL debut back in 2012 with the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the move by the RCB to trade him in from the Delhi Capitals will be a sort of homecoming for the Haryana lad.
He has struggled to be consistent with the ball and it shows up in his career as he has not played more than five games in any season after the 2015 edition. He could find a place in the playing XI only one 12 occasions across the last three seasons and his economy rate was around or more than nine runs per over in each season while the wicket column too has been thin on the number.
The RCB decided to let two pacers—Dale Steyn and Umesh Yadav from their squad and that could well be the reason behind the move to bring Harshal Patel back in the mix-up.
These players were traded by franchises before the auction in order to have more room for manoeuvring the squads around in order to find the perfect team combination. But, if they can’t find enough room to do so even after the auction, the board will give franchises another option to trade players from one camp to another from just a day after the auction on February 18.