'We Were Going to Get Bullied': Former Coach Recalls How RCB Missed Out on Re-signing Yuzvendra Chahal

Royal Challengers Bengaluru continue to regret their decision to release  Yuzvendra Chahal with their former leg-spinner, who now represents the Rajasthan Royals, continues to churn out match-winning performances for his latest IPL franchise.

On Monday night, Chahal scripted history to become the first player in IPL to have taken 200 wickets.

Former RCB head coach Mike Hesson has revealed the story behind how the side let go of their prized wicket-taker.

Speaking with JioCinema, the ex-RCB coach opened up on the plans for the side ahead of the 2022 mega-auctions where each side could have added an extra four crores to their purse if they retained only three players.

This ended up being a decision that now haunts the franchise till this date.

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“He’s (Chahal) an outstanding bowler and I guess when you come to every cycle you have to decide who are you going to retain. It’s one of those things where if you only retain three players, then that’s an extra four crores in the auction,” Hesson said.

Another play RCB had targeted was Harshal Patel as well who also won the purple cap with the side in 2021 and the plan was to go for both Harshal and Yuzi but what took them off guard was the order of which players’ name were announced at the auction.

“That potentially gave us the chance to get both Harshal and Yuzi. But then the order of the auction came up and Yuzuvendra Chahal was at number 65. Because we retained that many players, we were going to get bullied,” added Hesson.

READ MORE: IPL 2024: Yuzvendra Chahal Scripts History, Becomes First Bowler to Reach 200 IPL Wickets

With Chahal’s name coming in very late in the auction, it meant that they had to take the risk of going without a spinner early on or wait until the end and hope that the other sides did not have enough money to outbid them. Taking the non-risky approach, the franchises signed Wanindu Hasaranga with a price tag of Rs 10.75 crores.

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“So after Yuzi, there were no other spinners we were interested in. We were interested in Hasaranga, as another option if we did not get Yuzi. So we bid for him upfront but that meant we could not go in for Chahal,” Hesson said.

RR grabbed the opportunity and placed a winning bid worth Rs 6.5 crores.