In the forthcoming season, the Royal Challengers Bangalore will once again attempt to win the Indian Premier League. The IPL 2024 auction is scheduled for December 19 in Dubai. Before that, they must assemble a formidable team. Before the auction, they kept 17 players, and they swapped in two others: Mayank Dagar from Sunrisers Hyderabad and Cameron Green from the Mumbai Indians. Wanindu Hasaranga, Harshal Patel, Josh Hazlewood, Finn Allen, Michael Bracewell, David Willey, Wayne Parnell, Sonu Yadav, Avinash Singh, Siddharth Kaul, and Kedar Jadhav are the 11 players that were released. RCB has Rs 23.25 crore available for the IPL 2024 auction after revealing their list of released and retained players. They can occupy up to six spots, three of which are located abroad.
In the 2023 Indian Premier League, Royal Challengers Bangalore’s Faf Du Plessis and Virat Kohli performed admirably. Nonetheless, in certain games, even when they were well-set, the pair was unable to accelerate significantly. Because of this, even though they had wickets in hand, RCB scored below average multiple times. Together, Du Plessis and Kohli have an outstanding record and make a formidable team. However, Bangalore would be wise to add a player such as Travis Head to open the innings alongside Du Plessis and move Kohli to the number 3 spot.
Since Head bats significantly more aggressively, the opening spot works well for him. Australia’s World Cup hero has a 146.17 T20I strike rate. He has many tools at his disposal to launch the club into the lead. The left-handed hitter is also playing at the top of his game. He might therefore be a terrific addition to the RCB lineup for the 2024 IPL. Because Du Plessis is already 39 years old, Bangalore also needs a top-level attacker.
Surprisingly, now that Wanindu Hasaranga has been discharged, RCB will need to cover the hole in the spin bowling all-rounder department. They have Green as an all-rounder who bowls at a fast tempo, but in terms of abilities and experience, he is not nearly as good as Hasaranga. Bangalore would have preferred to have Hasaranga and Green in the team, but their auction budget would have been thrown away. Because of this, even if RCB is aware of Hasaranga’s value, it is unlikely that they will try to bid on him at the auction.
Exceptional all-rounders such as Hasaranga, who is very versatile for Sri Lanka, are hard to replace. The Royals can target a player similar to Rachin Ravindra of New Zealand, who bowls a little left-arm spin and had an outstanding 2023 ODI World Cup at bat. With a strike rate of 106.45 and an average of 64.22, the 24-year-old Ravindra amassed 578 runs in 10 innings, scoring three hundreds. In 53 games, he has 41 T20 scalps as a respectable left-arm spinner. The Bangalore team may benefit from having Ravindra as a utility player.
