IPL AUCTION 2019 PART 4 OF 4 – the fallen giants
Royal Challengers Bangalore
Going into 2018, RCB were expected to challenge for the title. What a lot of people didn’t expect however was the team to fail so miserably, only finding any real form towards the end of the competition. They have retained their top 3 of Kohli (currently the best Batman in the world and Captain of India), Patel and ABdV but have boosted their squad with 5 allrounders and 4 new batsmen. Coulter-nile is back but is only playing a part season due to touring Pakistan, thus Tim Southee (who joined from Mumbai in the offseason) could be more prominent.
2019 Squad
Batsmen: Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers*, Shimron Hetmyer*, Devdutt Padikkal, Himmat Singh
Wicketkeepers(/Batsmen): Parthiv Patel & Heinrich Klaasen*
Allrounders: Moeen Ali*, Colin de Grandhomme*, Marcus Stoinis*, Pawan Negi, Washington Sundar, Gurkeerat Singh (this guy was rated highly a few years ago in the Ranji trophy so could be a surprise with the bat), Shivam Dube (also a big hitter), Milind Kumar, P Barman, Akshdeep Narth
Spinners: Y Chahal
Pacebowlers: Nathan Coulter-Nile*, Mohammed Siraj, Tim Southee*, Umesh Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Kulwant Khejroliya
*-foreign players
Mumbai Indian
Finally, the most successful squad in the IPL series who have a habit of winning every odd-numbered season in the 2010s. Last year was a rubbish season where they were all over the place (particularly regarding batting, as well as their usual strengths of bowling and fielding). As expected, the Ambani family retained a large amount of the squad (they tend to be loyal to their players) and have resigned Lasith Malinga during the auction. In addition to this, they made a bizarre move to purchase Yuvraj Singh (for 1 crore) but have also made some interesting trades, chief amongst which (imo) is signing Quinton de Kock from RCB, giving them an intruiging choice of options to choose for the top and middle order. Additionally, they managed to get Jayant Yadav for a bargain 50 Lakh from Delhi post-auction.
2019 Squad
Batsmen: Evin Lewis*, Siddhesh Lad, Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Anmolpreet Singh
Wicketkeepers(/Batsmen): Quinton de Kock*, Ishan Kishan, Aditya Tare
Allrounders: Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya, Ben Cutting*, Kieron Pollard*, Anukul Roy, Yuvraj Singh, P Jaswal, Jayant Yadav
Spinners: M Markande, Rahul Chahar
Pacebowlers: Lasith Malinga*, Mitchell McClenaghan*, Adam Milne*, Jason Behrendorff*, Jasprit Bumrah, Barinder Sran, Rasikh Dar
*-foreign players