Mike Hesson opens up on why RCB didn't bid for Yuzvendra Chahal in mega auction

Royal Challengers Bangalore’s decision to let Yuzvendra Chahal go before the mega-auction of IPL 2022 was one of the greatest moves ever in franchise history. Chahal was deeply associated with RCB for a major part of his career and was quite successful.

Despite bowling in M Chinnaswamy Stadium mostly, Chahal managed to get wickets consistently while being less expensive than his counterparts. In fact, he has been the most successful bowler in the history of RCB.

While the leg-spinner is not part of RCB anymore, he is still their leading wicket-taker in the IPL. Chahal also had a wonderful campaign in 2021, partially held in UAE, picking 18 wickets, the second-most by an RCB bowler that year.

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Still, RCB decided not to retain him and went ahead with Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, and Mohammed Siraj as their three retentions before the IPL 2022. It was a shocking decision, something criticised by many.

Mike Hesson opens up on why RCB didn't bid for Yuzvendra Chahal in mega auction

Mike Hesson chatted in a show with Cricket.com, where he explained why RCB didn’t bid for Yuzvendra Chahal. Hesson explained their mock auction plans, and how they concluded not to bid for the leg-spinner.

“We only retained three players because we wanted to buy back both Harshal Patel and Yuzi at the auction. By only retaining three players, it gave us an extra four crore to do that.  Probably the thing that I’m frustrated about even now is the fact that he couldn’t make the top two marquee lists despite being one of the best ever in the IPL. That was ridiculous. And the fact that he came in at No.65 in the auction list (sic) meant that it was really difficult for us to guarantee that we will get him. That was something we spent a huge time on at the mock auctions. Harshal was in the first three sets but Yuzi was way down there (set six). We knew through all our mocks that we could get bullied later on (in the auction).“

Hesson added that RCB knew saving all the cash for set six could backfire since other teams also had whopping sum left.

“If we saved all our cash and waited for set six, we knew there were five other teams that had more money than us. Suppose we’d let go of all the bowlers before that and still failed to get Yuzi, we would have then been left without a leg-spinner. But yes, we spent hours and hours at the mock auction debating how we could potentially buy Yuzi.”

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