Ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 mega auction, Mumbai Indians (MI) arguably have the strongest core in the franchise. The five-time Indian Cricket League champions managed to retain all four Indian international stars, including Jasprit Bumrah, captain Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar ·Suryakumar Yadav and Rohit Sharma. Now, the biggest challenge facing MI is how to fully flesh out the squad with a relatively low budget of Rs 45 crore in the mega auction. Former India cricketer and expert Aakash Chopra has predicted that Mumbai Indians may make a strong bid for an Indian spinner.
“Given their reservations, Mumbai Indians may end up with a full Indian batting line-up and a full overseas bowling line-up, apart from a few Indian spinners. Whether they get him or not, they will definitely go after Yuzvind Chahar. They might also want to look at Washington Sundar,” Aakash Chopra said on his YouTube channel.
Surprisingly, Chahal was not retained by Rajasthan Royals (RR) ahead of the mega auction. The leg-spinner is the bowler with the most wickets in the history of IPL and is the only bowler to have over 200 IPL wickets.
In fact, Chahal has picked 18 or more wickets in each of the last 6 IPL seasons.
On the other hand, Sunrisers Hyderabad’s strong squad for IPL 2024 meant that Washington Sundar had to be dropped. However, Sundar has impressed in recent T20Is and Test matches for India and he is likely to fetch a high price at the auction.
Chopra also added that while he believes Mumbai Indians can bid for Ishant Kishan, the 26-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman might be out of their budget. Instead, he proposed some alternatives.
“They need a wicketkeeper-batsman. Maybe they will go for Quinton de Kock, or Jitesh Sharma, or Phil Salter. They need an overseas opener and a wicket-keeper batter.
The IPL mega auction will be held in Jeddah on November 24-25.
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