During an interview with Sportskeeda, Sunrisers Hyderabad’s bowling coach, Muttiah Muralitharan explained why SRH went to buy Nicholas Pooran for a huge amount of INR 10.75 CR in the mega auction of IPL 2022. The Sri Lankan revealed Ishan Kishan as their first choice for the wicket-keeping slot before the auction.
Nicholas Pooran is an elite West Indies player. The wicket-keeper has a big reputation in T20 cricket. Pooran’s performance in IPL 2021 was disappointing and that’s why Cricket experts were hugely surprised and critical of the amount that Nicholas bagged in the recently concluded auction.
Here’s what Muttiah Muralitharan revealed
Murali said “I would say we’ve got 80 percent of our plans right. We didn’t get the remaining 20 percent right because we couldn’t acquire Ishan Kishan. Had we purchased him, it would’ve been a perfect squad.”
The Sri Lankan added: “As I said, we initially wanted to buy Kishan. But once his bid crossed our budget, we were forced to look for alternatives. We wanted an international wicketkeeper who would be available for all the games. So we thought Pooran was the right choice once Kishan slipped away.”
Ishan Kishan, the Indian opener was the most expensive player of IPL Mega Auction 2022 bagging INR 15.25 crore and he was the third most expensive Indian player in the history of IPL. After a huge bidding war, the wicket-keeper was sold to Mumbai Indians. Kishan played for Mumbai in all the seasons since 2018 and has been an integral part of their setup. The left-hander has the power-hitting ability that only a few players in the world have.
Fans remain skeptical of the amount that Pooran got. However, Kane Williamson-led Sunrisers will be desperately hoping to see Nicholas Pooran fire in the upcoming season of IPL.
Sunrisers Hyderabad’s squad for IPL 2022: Kane Williamson, Umran Malik, Abdul Samad, Washington Sundar, Nicholas Pooran, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Priyam Garg, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Kartik Tyagi, Shreyas Gopal, Jagadeesha Suchith, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Romario Shepherd, Sean Abbott, R Samarth, Shashank Singh, Saurabh Dubey, Vishnu Vinod, Glenn Phillips, Fazalhaq Farooqi