I keep saying it. It all goes back to that auction table. People like Hasaranga, Harshal are all good cricketers but when you have two of them taking 20% of your purse, it's just bad buys. People don't want to admit it, but CSK wins trophies because of purchases like Conway @ 1Cr. or a Du Plessis at 50L. That is where you win trophies. RCB has some absolute pearls in Wiley, Bracewell and Patidar but they simply need to be smarter on the auction table. They had a grand 20 crores on the bench today with Hoff and Hasaranga.
EDIT- One more thing- If RCB is serious about winning this thing then they need to do something about the pitch at Chinnaswamy. They travel well but they just get thrashed at home. Put something in it for the quick bowlers. Their batting is good enough to handle it.
I saw reports of Hasaranga being unfit which is why he was taken out, Hazlewood is definitely not fully fit. I’ve long said that Hasaranga has been misused by RCB with the bat, paying that much money for him was obviously because they saw him originally as an all-rounder. He needs to bat higher when he plays, he’s shown his capabilities for Sri Lanka when he does so.
Looking at the RCB squad from outside, I see that they’ve got a lot of money locked in Kaul fot one. Releasing him, DK and Rawat should get around 16 crores back which is quite a significant sum of money. Jacks could always be released to retain Bracewell to save even more money but I do think Jacks is a very talented bloke who deserves a chance.
Chinnaswamy might be the biggest weakness of this RCB team at the end. They either need to find out which bowlers still thrive in that environment (like Chahal) and overpay for them or else figure out an alternative. I think they had conditions that suited bowling more than batting in 2017 and it wasn’t pretty back then for them.
