IPL Auction 2020: 5 biggest names who were released
Things are heating up as the 13th season of the Indian Premier League approaches. The IPL has evolved over time with the teams being wiser in terms of their squad formations. Teams have been extremely proactive this time around as well and have utilised the trade window and releasing of players. This was perhaps the busiest trade window in the history of IPL with big guns like Ravichandran Ashwin and Ajinkya Rahane being traded out of their respective teams.
The teams got a chance to weed out players who were either under-utilised or failed to perform as per expectations in the last season and they seem to have made good use of it.
While some releases were expected, other big names being left out was quite surprising. Here are five of the biggest names that were released by the franchises.
Also see – T10 schedule
#5 Robin Uthappa (Kolkata Knight Riders)
Robin Uthappa's long association with Kolkata Knight Riders ended with the former being released for the upcoming IPL season. Uthappa joined KKR in 2014, the year they won their second IPL title and has been the backbone of KKR's batting since then. Uthappa has been extremely versatile and has batted at various positions in the line-up. The Karnataka batsman also kept wickets for the side for a long time. Even though his performance has been steady over the years, questions were raised on his intent, or the lack of it, in IPL 2019.
Uthappa failed to get going in the middle overs and his slow batting cost KKR a couple of matches. He scored 282 runs in 12 games with an average of 31.33. However, his low strike-rate of 115.10 was a big talking point. KKR has put their money on youngsters in the past couple of seasons and thus, Uthappa was released from the side.