NEWS
Follow UsYuzvendra Chahal, the highest wicket-taker in Indian Premier League (IPL) history, has been one of the best players to have played for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). The Bengaluru-based franchise, after releasing him at the end of the 2021 season, wanted to get him back during the IPL 2025 auction.
However, the price of the leg-spinner skyrocketed, and RCB had to shy away from going all guns for him as they had already exceeded their budget for a leg-spinner in their single bid of INR 14.25 crore.
“We tried to recruit Yuzi Chahal, but unfortunately, we pulled up [entered] quite deep into that bidding process, but not deep enough to get him [RCB made a single bid at Rs 14.25 crore before pulling out],” Mo Bobat, Director of Cricket RCB was quoted as saying to ESPN ESPNcricinfo.
Bobat also explained that even though Chahal is a single-skill player, that skill is very important, and therefore, they wanted to go for him.
“We were very keen on Yuzi, and that's reflected in the fact that he was a key target for us, and we went quite high for him. We actually didn't want to overspend on any one individual.
"In his case, of course, he's a single-skill player, but it's an important skill. Like most teams, you set a budget for a role, and we exceeded that budget quite a bit in our bidding, but we could only go so far,” added the Englishman.
Bobat, who specialises in talent actuation, having worked for nearly 12 years in the England U-19 and senior teams’ set-up, said that even though they did not get Chahal, they are happy enough to have various other spin bowling options.
“We were always pretty happy with Suyash Sharma as our back-up if we weren't able to get Yuzi. He's an attacking legspinner, bowls at a good pace, and attacks the stumps.
We also have Livingstone, who bowls both off-spin and leg-spin, depending on whether he's bowling to left-handers or right-handers. So that's a good threat,” he said.
