Indian Premier League franchise Delhi Capitals is set to part ways with Indian allrounder Shardul Thakur ahead of the 2023 edition of the tournament. As per Cricbuzz, the 31-tear-old is one of the players Delhi will be releasing in less than three weeks’ time when they must notify the BCCI a list of players they wish to retain from their last year’s squad.
Thakur had been picked for a whopping sum of INR 10.75 crores at the IPL 2022 auction by DC. In his first season with the franchise, Thakur emerged as his team’s regular no. 7, scoring his runs at a strike-rate of 137.93, apart from taking 15 wickets with the ball.
But it seems that the speedster’s lack of consistency with the bat and his high-end ER of 9.78 has caught the think-tank’s scanner as they now look to release him before approaching the IPL 2023 auction to find a better fit for their end-overs needs with bat and ball.
Reacting to a disappointing campaign, where they never quite played to their potential and finished fifth in the ten-team points table with seven wins, Delhi are looking to iron out some of their chinks, a process they could begin by moving past Thakur after just one season, Cricbuzz reported.
Two other players who are reportedly dispensable to DC’s needs heading into the auction in December are wicketkeeper-batter KS Bharat and middle-order backup batter Mandeep Singh. Bharat and Mandeep had been roped in at sums of INR 1.10 and 2 crores, respectively, by the franchise at last year’s auction. But they could never fit them into DC’s regular plans.
Bharat, who had an encouraging IPL 2021 with Royal Challengers Bangalore, got only two opportunities to add to his gains with the bat as an RCB No.3 before being sidelined. Mandeep played only three of DC’s fourteen matches.
The auction for the IPL 2023 will reportedly take place on December 16, with Bangalore or Istanbul in contention as a potential venue for the bidding war. A month before this, in mid-November, each of the ten IPL franchises must submit to the BCCI a list of their retained cricketers for the next season.
