IPL 2021: Here are the major updates
On January 20, the Indian Premier League witnessed all eight teams naming their squads besides releasing several players from the roster ahead of the 2021 auction. Now the teams have time until February 4 to trade players. On Wednesday, the Royal Challengers Bangalore traded in two players from Delhi Capitals. Here we present the major updates from the IPL.
Interestingly, RCB became the first team to include players via the IPL trade window when they acquired a couple of DC all-rounders in Daniel Sams and Harshal Patel respectively in an all-cash deal. Notably, Sams made his IPL debut in 2020 and failed to claim any wicket, playing three games. Meanwhile, Harshal took three wickets from five games in IPL 2020.
Veteran batsman Robin Uthappa has joined Chennai Super Kings in an all-cash deal from Rajasthan Royals. Uthappa will be representing his sixth franchise in the IPL. Earlier, he played for MI, RCB, PWI, KKR, before joining RR last season. Uthappa failed to impress for RR, scoring 196 runs at 16.33. Overall, he has amassed 4,607 runs at 27.92.
Senior Australian pacer Nathan Coulter-Nile grabbed eyeballs when he was picked up by MI for Rs. 8 crore in the IPL 2020 Auction. However, with MI having plenty of resources in the pace department, Coulter-Nile featured in just seven games, claiming five wickets. He took two wickets in the final. After being released by MI, he said he was expecting the same.
Coulter-Nile said he was expecting it to happen and is hopeful of being picked in the 2021 auction. "I was expecting that was going to happen," Coulter-Nile told ESPNCricinfo. "They paid overs for me so I thought that was going to happen. Hopefully, I can get picked up again this year. I've got nothing else on so hopefully I can get to the IPL."
Australia's wicket-keeper batsman Alex Carey was released by DC. He said the decision didn't surprise him. "It wasn't a surprise. Those things, you get a bit of an inkling for and I didn't play a lot of cricket, just sat on the sidelines, so it probably makes sense to open that spot up for someone else, Carey was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au.
