By We’re on the road to Indian Premier League 2021. The first pitstop ahead of the 14th edition of the IPL is the players’ auction, which is scheduled to take place on February 18 in Chennai. Last week, as all eight teams announced a list of released and retained players, some very big names were left out, including the dangerous Glenn Maxwell, Steve Smith, James Neesham and others. While some exclusions were surprising, others were on expected lines. As we gear up for the IPL to return to India, here is a list of five players who may struggle to find a team in the auction.
1 Harbhajan Singh: Harbhajan Singh is 40 years old, and having missed the last IPL due to personal reasons, the door seems to be shutting quickly of the veteran off-spinner. In the two seasons he played for CSK, the franchise saw him as an asset who could be backed without playing any form of cricket the entire year, but given CSK’s aim at rejigging the franchise, the off-spinner could well have played his last IPL game.
2 Murali Vijay: Murali Vijay was another experienced batsman released by CSK. His last valuable season came in 2016, when Vijay plundered 453 runs for Kings XI Punjab. However, Vijay has since fallen flat in his IPL curve, getting limited opportunities. After not playing a single game in 2017, Vijay featured in one game in 2018, two in 2019 and three in 2020. Vijay isn’t playing the Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament either, and if all these factors are to be combined, he is a likely candidate to go unsold on February 18.
3 Karun Nair: Karun Nair has gone without a 50-plus score in the last 10 of his T20 outings. In fact, his highest score has been 27 against Jammu Kashmir in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. In IPL 2020, he played just four games, scoring 16 runs. The year before, Nair got to play just one match even as the team grappled with middle-order batting woes. With absolutely no form or runs behind him, Nair might sit out of IPL 2021.
4 Jason Roy: Even though the hard-hitting England opening batsmen, the star of their 2019 World Cup campaign, Jason Roy, has shown promising form in the Big Bash League, chances of him getting picked in the IPL are slim. It stems mostly out of the team combination of all eight IPL franchises, who seem to be more or less sorted as far as their opening combination goes. In 2018, Roy played only five games for Delhi Capitals, scoring 120 runs, while not getting a single match the last two editions.
5 Kedar Jadhav: Kedar Jadhav was at the centre of a meme-fest last IPL, when his slow batting for Chennai Super Kings against Rajasthan Royals. However, Jadhav recently scored consecutive half-centuries for Maharashtra in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, but is it enough for team to show interest in him? Unlikely. At 35, Jadhav’s bane seems to be his fitness, and with stakes so high, teams might be unwilling to take that risk with him.
