Indian cricketers had a field day at the IPL 2021 auction. Out of the 204 players that were sold to all 10 franchises across two days, the only 67 were overseas. The three costliest players sold were all Indians, with Ishan Kishan going to Mumbai Indians for ₹15.25 crore, Deepak Chahar to Chennai Super Kings for ₹14 crore and Shreyas Iyer to Kolkata Knight Riders for ₹12.25 crore.
The next big amount that was forked out was ₹11.5 crore, by Punjab Kings on England all-rounder Liam Livingstone. After him, ₹10.75 crore each was spent on four players – two of whom were Indians. They were Shardul Thakur who was snapped up by Delhi Capitals and Harshal Patel, who will return to Royal Challengers Bangalore again.
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Harshal was part of India’s Playing XI for the opening T20I against West Indies in Kolkata, and ahead of the game, former captain Sunil Gavaskar lavished humongous praise on the 31-year-old bowler. The legendary Gavaskar feels that the amount shelled out on Harshal at the IPL auction was justified given how emphatically the pacer has turned a corner.
“Look he deserves every penny, every rupee that he’s earned at the auction. He put in a fabulous performance last year. And the best part about Harshal Patel is how he has reinvented himself. Earlier, he was a bowler batters were looking to face because he hardly had any change of pace. He was being taken for a lot of runs. He is learning from it, he has improved from that. Now, he is the bowler that batters do not want to face because they don’t know what he is going to bowl,” Gavaskar said to the host broadcaster.
Harshal bagged 32 wickets for RCB in IPL 2021, which is the record for the joint-highest wickets by a bowler in a single edition of the Indian Premier League. Hence, it was only a matter of time before RCB went after him. Gavaskar believes Harshal has improved drastically and the amount of variations he has added in his repertoire makes him a batter’s nightmare.
“He has got a very good yorker. He has got a slower bouncer. He has got a delivery that skids along quite nicely so he has got the works and he knows when to use it because of the experience he has had playing in the IPL for the last few years. He has only got better every year,” added Gavaskar.
