The Indian Premier League (IPL) auction will take place in Chennai on Thursday (February 18) from 3pm onwards with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) entering with large purse of over Rs 35 crore. After deciding not to retain top players Moeen Ali and Umesh Yadav, the RCB team management including skipper Virat Kohli might be tempted to aggressively bid for Australian big-hitter like Glenn Maxwell.
Former Kolkata Knight Riders skipper Gautam Gambhir also believes that Maxwell might be one of the players that RCB might target in the IPL mini-auction.
“They (RCB) would need some quality players because they have let go of some quality players – Moeen Ali and Umesh Yadav for example. There are not many fast bowlers going around in the Indian circuit at the moment,” Gambhir said on Star Sports show ‘Cricket Connected’.
“You’ve got Navdeep Saini who is young, you’ve got someone like Mohammed Siraj, he can go hot and cold in T20 cricket, so probably releasing Umesh Yadav was the big surprise. Probably, they will look at someone like Glenn Maxwell because they need to get take a lot of pressure out of Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers,” the former India opener felt.
Maxwell had a very poor IPL 2020 with Kings XI Punjab, scoring just 108 runs in 13 games with a top-score of 32. But the Australian all-rounder has been in fine form with the bat in limited-overs series against England and India at the end of last year.
“You want someone like an X-factor, like Maxwell, and at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, where it’s flat and small, so he can have that impact,” Gambhir added.
Gambhir also felt that Kohli might look to open to the batting regularly with young star Devdutt Paddikal.
“Looking at the combination as well, Virat Kohli would look to open the batting, that’s what I think. I’m not sure, that is up to the management and Virat Kohli himself, whether he wants to, but yes, he’s more suited to open the batting. And he will open with Devdutt Paddikal and then, you have AB de Villiers,” Gambhir felt.
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB):
Purse: Rs 35.40 cr; Slots left: 11; Overseas slots left: 3
Current squad:
Top-order batsmen: Virat Kohli (c), Devdutt Padikkal, Josh Philippe (wk)
Finishers: AB de Villiers (wk), Pavan Deshpande
All-rounders: Washington Sundar, Daniel Sams
Spinners: Yuzvendra Chahal, Adam Zampa, Shahbaz Ahmed
Fast bowlers: Mohammed Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Kane Richardson, Harshal Patel
Targets: Glenn Maxwell, Shakib Al Hasan, Daniel Christian, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Kyle Jamieson, Mustafizur Rahman and Mohammed Azharuddeen
You can watch the IPL 2021 auction on Live Streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
