RCB’s Director of Cricket, Mo Bobat, has said that the team would have loved to go for Mitchell Starc, but the order of the auction made it difficult for them.
Starc and Cummins ended up being the costliest buys in the IPL 2024 auction with the left-arm pacer being sold for Rs. 24.75 crore to KKR. While RCB did have a fair crack at getting the Australian skipper, they ultimately fell short as Sunrisers Hyderabad got him for Rs. 20 crore.
RCB would then go to purchase the likes of Alzarri Joseph, Yash Dayal, Tom Curran and Lockie Ferguson to strengthen their bowling attack.
Speaking to the franchise’s website, Bobat said that RCB wanted to be in a good spot to have a good crack at both Cummins and Starc but the order dictated things at the end of the day.
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The RCB Director of cricket further commented that they couldn’t risk the chance of losing Joseph by waiting for Starc and felt they would have ended up being outbid for the Australian pacer.
Bobat said they were happy to lock in Joseph earlier.
“Now, there were obviously two big buys that everyone was after, Cummins and Starc. We wanted to have ourselves in a position to have a good crack at both of them. So the order does dictate what you are capable of doing. We did have a good crack at Cummins but obviously were outbid by SRH and ideally we would have liked to go for Starc but the order made that tricky.”
“So from our perspective Alzarri was another big target. So looking at the finances that were available for all the other teams at that moment, we couldn’t really risk the chance of losing Alzarri and then waiting for Starc and there was a good chance that we may have landed him. But the reality is we would have got outbidden because you can see the number that he got sold for. So a big judgment call from us. So, we’re very happy to go earlier to call for Alzarri before locking him in.”
