The auction for IPL 2021 is underway at the moment and it will be really interesting to see which players will be purchased by which IPL franchises, who will go unsold and who will fetch the highest amount. Royal Challengers Bangalore is one such team which has been touted to be one of the strongest teams in almost every season but still it has failed in winning an IPL trophy even once. Earlier this year, every franchise released some players and retained some as a part of their preparation for auction and quite amazingly, the Bangalore franchise released the most number of players, i.e., ten.
The players who were released by RCB are Isuru Udana, Moeen Ali, Pawan Negi, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Shivam Dube, Dale Steyn, Aaron Finch, Parthiv Patel, Umesh Yadav and Chris Morris.
The former Indian cricketer turned politician Gautam Gambhir is not much happy with the release of Umesh Yadav by RCB as he feels that at this moment, what RCB needs the most is a good pacer. While talking on a sports show on a sports channel, the Delhi cricketer says that we will need to wait and watch to see whether the players who have performed good in IPL 2019 and IPL 2020 will be able to repeat their performance in IPL 2021 or not. He adds that RCB will need to get some quality players as they have already released several quality cricketers such as Umesh Yadav and Moeen Ali.
Gautam Gambhir is of the opinion that releasing Umesh Yadav is a big surprise because there are not many pacers available in the present scenario. He further says that there are young bowlers like Mohammed Siraj and Navdeep Saini and their performance can be fluctuating in T20.
Gambhir also talks about the batting aspect of RCB as he states that the Bangalore franchise should go for Glenn Maxwell as the pressure on Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers needs to be reduced. Moreover, Maxwell has expressed his willingness to play for RCB too as his idol AB de Villiers is in the team and he also wants to play under the leadership of Virat Kohli.
Gambhir goes on to say that though it is upto Virat and the team management of RCB but he feels that Kohli should open for his team as it suits him more. Gautam Gambhir further adds that Virat will open with Devdutt Padikkal who has showed a lot of promise in the last season and then they will have AB de Villiers in the middle so what they need is an X-factor player like Maxwell who can be very handy in Chinnaswamy stadium as it is flat and small.
Do you think Gautam Gambhir’s analysis is correct? Let us know your views in this connection.