Former Director of Cricket Operations at Royal Challengers Bangalore, Mike Hesson revealed the reasons behind releasing Yuzvendra Chahal following the 2021 Indian Premier League season. This ended a seven-year stint with the Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Yuzvendra Chahal had expressed his disappointment at not being retained by the franchise. The Royal Challengers Bangalore chose Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell and Mohammed Siraj as their three retained players. They also failed to sign Yuzvendra Chahal during the auctions. Talking about the incident, Mike Hesson said during a live interaction ‘Unwind with Cricket.com’.
“I spoke to Yuzi (Yuzvendra Chahal) obviously when we did the initial retention and we only retained three players because we felt we wanted to try and buy back both Harshal Patel and Yuzi at the auction. Probably the thing that I’m really frustrated about even now is as you said Yuzi is probably one of the top-five players of all time for RCB but he was also one of the best ever in the IPL and the fact that he couldn’t make the top two marquee lists at that time was ridiculous, the fact that he came in as number 65 on the auction list means that it was really difficult for us to guarantee we were going to get him.”
Whole Chahal Auction explained by Hesson
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“For Chahal, we knew there were five other teams that had more money than us and if we let go of all the bowlers before that and then we got to bidding for Yuzi and everyone knew we were going for Yuzi and we didn’t get him, we could have got bullied by five other teams and then been left with no leg spinner. So it was one that we’d spent hours and hours debating and trying to manipulate the mock auctions of how we could potentially leave ourselves with Yuzi.”
Yuzvendra Chahal was upset: Mike Hesson
The Royal Challengers Bangalore signed Wanindu Hasaranga for INR 10.75 Cr at the 2022 auctions. Mike Hesson expressed that they felt the Sri Lankan spinner was a good option as bidding for Yuzvendra Chahal was going to be tough. Yuzvendra Chahal was signed by the Rajasthan Royals for INR 6.50 Cr. Hesson recalled,
“We got Hasaranga which we were delighted with but we knew that obviously, that would have flow-on effects so it was something that we tried really hard and then I remember ringing Yuzi afterwards, he was upset and trying to explain to him the auction dynamics at that time was you know he was not interested and I don’t blame him. He was an RCBian and he was frustrated but I can assure you and him that is well aware of the issues we were confronted with and obviously, I was part of that decision-making process but I certainly wasn’t the only one involved in those discussions.”
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