BBL 12 Draft: Scorchers explain why they overlooked du Plessis, Andre Russell

Kieron Pollard and Andre Russell in IPL

Perth Scorchers rounded up their list for the upcoming Big Bash League 2022-23 (BBL) season with new signings. At the BBL 12 draft, they acquired Englishmen Phil Salt, Tymal Mills and retained Laurie Evans.

Notably, Evans was one of the standout performers in Scorchers victorious BBL campaign in the previous edition of the tournament.

BBL 12 draft: Scorchers recruiter on snubbing platinum players

While several new talents were either drafted into new teams or were retained by their old ones by the BBL 12 draft, a notable number of platinum players found no takers at the event.

Former South African captain Faf du Plessis, West Indies’ T20 powerhouses Kieron Pollard, Andre Russell and Dwayne Bravo were among the few cricketers from the platinum category which were surprisingly snubbed by all eight franchises.

Faf du Plessis was snubbed at the Draft

From Perth Scorchers’ perception, their recruitment head Kade Harvey stated that there was never a temptation to pick the platinum-tier players who missed out on BBL 12’s drafting event.

He added that the franchise values Faf and were even interested in acquiring the South African legend a couple of seasons ago. Harvey said:

“For us it wasn’t a huge surprise because of what we’ve valued for a long time, we just wanted to continue to be true to us and what we felt was successful. That’s no disrespect to guys like Andre Russell or Faf who was someone we were really interested in looking at a couple of years ago, so he’s certainly someone we would value.”

On picking Laurie Evans, Harvey said that they needed to retain him and the franchise overall is happy with the three players they have retained. Here is a look at the Scorchers round-up from the BBL 12 draft.

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