The IPL retention that took place recently has lately become one of the most talked-about topics in the cricket fraternity. This time 19 Indian players were retained by the teams and only eight overseas players were retained by the teams, unlike past retentions. However, one thing that has taken everyone by surprise is that only one cricketer from Australia has been retained by the IPL franchises.
Australia’s star cricketer Glenn Maxwell is the only Australian to be retained by an Indian Premier League franchise ahead of the mega-auctions. The 33-year-old cricketer was retained by Royal Challengers Bangalore for a fee of $2 million — $500,000 less than last season.
The move has left everyone surprised as recently the Australian cricket team was recently crowned as the World T20I Champions after they won the T20I World Cup 2021.
Meanwhile, the likes of Australian cricketing stars who were also on big contracts last season, including the likes of David Warner ($2.3m) Pat Cummins ($3.16m), Jhye Richardson ($2.48m), Steve Smith ($389,000), Nathan Coulter-Nile ($885,000), among others, were all released by their respective franchises.
David Warner, who turned out to be the player of the 2021 T20 World Cup, gave some incredible performances and was one of the biggest reasons behind the victory of the Australian cricket team, was also retained by Sunrisers Hyderabad. Josh Hazlewood was also released by Chennai Super Kings’ retention list despite playing an important role in the 2021 edition of the IPL
England stars Jofra Archer and Ben Stokes have also been released by their IPL team Rajasthan Royals ahead of the auction. While Eoin Morgan has also been released by Kolkata Knight Riders.
Meanwhile, these players will are expected to draw plenty of interest at the upcoming IPL 2022 mega-auctions, especially with two new teams joining in season 2022 — Lucknow and Ahmedabad.
Talking about the retained players, Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Rishabh Pant, and Rohit Sharma will continue to play for RCB, CSK, DC and MI respectively.
Here, check out the complete list of retained players:
Chennai Super Kings: Ravindra Jadeja, MS Dhoni, Moeen Ali, Ruturaj Gaikwad.
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav, Kieron Pollard.
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, Mohammed Siraj.
Delhi Capitals: Rishabh Pant, Axar Patel, Prithvi Shaw, Anrich Nortje.
Punjab Kings: Mayank Agarwal, Arshdeep Singh.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer, Sunil Narine.
Rajasthan Royals: Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler, Yashasvi Jaiswal.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson, Abdul Samad, Umran Malik.
