Devdutt Padikkal had a big payday at the IPL 2022 mega-auction on Saturday as he was sold to Rajasthan Royals for a handsome sum of INR 7.75 crore. This ended his three-year association with the Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Padikkal attained great success at RCB in the last two seasons. He had a terrific debut season in IPL 2020, scoring 473 runs with 5 fifties. He had a similar outing in IPL 2021, amassing 411 runs, hammering his maiden IPL century – 101* versus Rajasthan Royals, who have now gained the left-hander’s services.
RCB, though, wanted to get back their opener: they started bidding for Padikkal from his base price of 2 crore and stretched up to 4.4 crore, before moving out of the bidding war with the Royals. RCB had spent big amounts on Faf du Plessis and then on Harshal Patel, and wanted to save for other favoured players, hence didn’t go in deeper for Padikkal.
But, the RCB social media admin did put out a heart-warming message for the young left-hand opener who made his India T20I debut in July last year.
“We tried our best it wasn’t meant to be. Thank you for all the memories, and all the best for your next stint @devdpd07! You’ll always be one of our favourites!” RCB tweeted.
We tried our best it wasn’t meant to be.
Thank you for all the memories, and all the best for your next stint @devdpd07! You’ll always be one of our favourites! ??#PlayBold #WeAreChallengers #IPLMegaAuction #IPL2022 #IPLAuction pic.twitter.com/rCiUGpWXjF
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) February 12, 2022
The 21-year-old youngster made his India debut on the Sri Lanka tour last year, featuring in a couple of T20Is, and scored 38 runs in two games.
Overall, Devdutt Padikkal has played 54 T20 matches, registering 1829 runs at 37 while striking at 136, smashing 2 centuries and 13 fifties in the way. Rajasthan Royals will have some rejigging to do as apart from Padikkal, they also had retained Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jos Buttler as openers, and there is Sanju Samson too who also likes to play in the top-order.
