Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) has ended their 7 year relationship with their most successful bowler Yuzvendra Chahal in Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2022 during the major auction.
He was bought by Rajasthan Royals (RR) for 6.5 crore in the auction and thus ended the long term relationship with the old franchise.
After the auction, many allegations were faced by Royals who didn’t make the final call for the bowler. Now their former director of cricket, Mike Hesson, revealed the exact reason behind the termination of this leggie from the team during an interview with cricket.com,
“Yuzi was communicated with a huge amount. And I know that because I was the guy at the other end of the phone. I remember ringing Yuzi afterwards and he was upset. It was very difficult to try and explain the auction dynamics to him at that time. He was visibly disinterested, and I don't blame him. He was an RCBian and he was frustrated. But I can assure everyone that he is well-aware of the issues we were confronted with.”
They only retained three players before the 2022 Auction, in which Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell and Mohammad Siraj were there. They released their two main bowlers – Harshal Patel and Yuzvendra Chahal, and wanted to get them into the auction.
“Yuzi was communicated with a huge amount. And I know that because I was the guy at the other end of the phone. I remember ringing Yuzi afterwards and he was upset. It was very difficult to try and explain the auction dynamics to him at that time. He was visibly disinterested, and I don't blame him. He was an RCBian and he was frustrated. But I can assure everyone that he is well-aware of the issues we were confronted with.”
During the auction, Bangalore spent a huge amount for Wanindu Hasaranga (10.75 crores) and got him into their squad. The decision behind taking Hasaranga over Yuzi was revealed by Mike Hesson after saying,
“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.
We felt we needed to have a decent dip at Wanindu Hasaranga obviously the fact he was, a three-dimensional player, batting for Sri Lanka had been really good at that time, was well, good player of spin and was performing incredibly well on the international stage. So we felt that if we weren't going to get Yuzi, Hasaranga was a really nice option for us.”
Chahal came to RCB from MI in 2014, when the Bangalore management got him at his base price of 10.00 Lakhs. But after successful years, he got an incredible increment in 2018 Premier League, when he was settled with the franchise with 6.00 crores. He has taken 139 wickets for the Royals, which is the most by any player in the RCB.