Royal Challengers’ Bangalore’s Director of Cricket Operations on Saturday stated that the franchise will decide their captain once the ongoing 2022 IPL mega auction is completed.
On Saturday — Day 1 of the auction — Bangalore picked Faf du Plessis, Dinesh Karthik, Josh Hazlewood, Anuj Rawat and Akash Deep apart from buying back last year’s players Harshal Patel and Wanindu Hasaranga.
“We haven’t had that discussion yet. We have got three incredible leaders in our group. The likes of Maxwell, Virat and Faf so we are really happy with those three leaders. Also, we got Josh Hazlewood, a leader from a bowling point of view. We are really happy with the group in terms of combination leaders. We will make the decision around captaincy after the auction,” said Hesson in the virtual press conference.
“We are very happy as a group. We worked very hard in trying to get back a lot of our core for this year. It became pretty difficult on a few occasions. But we were delighted to get Harshal Patel back. I think we saw from all the all-rounders, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur and to get 10.75 crore for a proven performer like Harshal was a good buy. We are really pleased to get him back.”
Hesson was delighted over getting Karthik, making his entry into RCB fold after 2015. “We are really happy with the middle order and also got the likes of DK, which gives us experience through the middle and is really important to sort of control some of the more talented players that we have got around him.”
Hesson backed the specialist skills of Sri Lanka’s Hasaranga in the absence of their start leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal who will now play for Rajasthan Royals.
“In terms of Wanindu Hasaranga, last year we had other options with Chahal as the local spinner. He gives us balance and has got the ability to bat anywhere between five and eight and has got some specialist skills in that area. He can bowl in power-play and middle order as well. So, he’s got some skills there.”
“We would have loved to go for Yuzvendra Chahal but the challenge is that without budget, Chahal was coming later in the auction. We knew there was a risk and was undervalued in terms of what he went for. We felt that with Hasaranga, a multi-skill player, we had another way of going about it. That was the strategy and we pretty much paid bang on in our budget for most buys today.”
