Sunil Gavaskar Made A Big Statement About Harshal Patel: Two days of exciting IPL 2022 mega-auction came to an end on Sunday with a total of 204 players getting sold out of the shortlisted 600 in the auction with all the 10 teams forming their squads for almost three years.
The top three costliest players sold were all Indians, with Ishan Kishan going to Mumbai Indians for ₹15.25 crore, Deepak Chahar to Chennai Super Kings for ₹14 crores, and Shreyas Iyer to Kolkata Knight Riders for ₹12.25 crore.
Following them, the next big amount spent on the players was ₹11.5 crores by Punjab Kings for England’s Liam Livingstone. After him, four players were bought at ₹10.75 crores each, out of which two of them were Indians. While one was Shardul Thakur was bought by Delhi Capitals and Harshal Patel was bought by Royal Challengers Bangalore again.
Harshal Patel impressed one and all with his brilliant performances in the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League, where he bagged 32 wickets. He was also a part of Team India’s Playing XI for the opening T20I against West Indies in Kolkata.
Meanwhile, former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar heaped praises on the 31-year-old bowler. Sunil Gavaskar feels that the amount shelled out on Harshal Patel at the IPL auction was justified considering the brilliant performances of the Indian bowler. He said:
“Look he deserves every penny, every rupee that he’s earned at the auction. He put in a fabulous performance last year. And the best part about Harshal Patel is how he has reinvented himself. Earlier, he was a bowler batters were looking to face because he hardly had any change of pace. He was being taken for a lot of runs. He is learning from it, he has improved from that. Now, he is the bowler that batters do not want to face because they don’t know what he is going to bowl,”
Sunil Gavaskar believes Harshal Patel has improved drastically and the number of variations he has added makes him a nightmare for batters. He said:
“He has got a very good yorker. He has got a slower bouncer. He has got a delivery that skids along quite nicely so he has got the works and he knows when to use it because of the experience he has had playing in the IPL for the last few years. He has only got better every year,”
