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Australian all-rounder Cameron Green emerged as a crucial part of the IPL trade window as he joined the Royal Challengers Bangalore from the Mumbai Indians in an all-cash deal. The deal allowed Mumbai to complete a historic trade for Gujarat Titans captain Hardik Pandya in a similar manner. Talking about Green’s arrival, RCB's Director of Cricket Mo Bobat expressed how the Aussie starlet will be the perfect middle-order cog for Bangalore.
Bobat also revealed that RCB was planning to go for Cameron Green if he was made available in the auction. But with Mumbai making Green available as a trade piece, they had to make a quick decision. The deal also made sense after the franchise decided to release Sri Lankan all-rounder Waindu Hasaranga as Green could take up that role in the playing XI.
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While speaking in a video released by RCB, Bobat said, “With us having made the very difficult decision to release one into Hasaranga, that middle-order power option could be an overseas player. Someone like Cameron Green was a perfect fit for us and certainly somebody that we discussed as a standout option if available, going into the auction. Much of that background was the thinking that we had been doing over the week that led us to some of the difficult decisions, but also where our focus would lie.”
“Then with a couple of hours of the retention and release deadline to go, we were made aware of Cameron's potential availability for trade, which we had to take seriously. Having spoken to the guys at MI, we got a small group of us together at our end, and we thought we better discuss this and debate the pros and cons of trying to make this trade work, which is what we did for a little bit of time. Essentially, we were trying to weigh up whether we take the risk of someone else picking up Cameron Green now. That could have happened, I guess, before that deadline. By hoping he makes it to the auction as a release player, but somebody else could have picked him up, which is obviously the case. Even then, if you get to the auction, there's no guarantee that you get him at auction because you could easily be outbid. We know that Cameron's a high-quality player. He's going to attract huge interest. So they were the things weighing on our minds. Or could we try and get him now at a comparable value? You're always making predictions about value. You never know that with real certainty,” he continued .
“So could we try and make that trade happen now and go into the auction with some degree of certainty and probably our primary gap filled, or at least one of our two primary gaps filled is how we were thinking about it? Then that then focuses our auction towards a smaller number of things. After some back and forth with the guys at Mumbai and exploring both the player swap trade and also a cash-only trade, we managed to agree on the cash trade, but only at the 11th hour, which was interesting. It was an exciting finish and certainly not the quiet afternoon I was expecting,” he concluded.
Further, Bobat threw light on Cameron Green’s for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the coming season. He spoke about Green’s powerful batting prowess against spin and pace. Bobat also talked about Green’s bowling which will be extremely useful throughout and his fielding acumen which makes a complete package.
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He said, “With regards to Cameron himself, he is the ideal fit for us in that middle-order power role. He's a high-quality, skilful, and powerful batsman. He's got a game against both pace and spin. He's obviously got international experience across formats. I'm sure he will enjoy batting in the Chiniswami. Seeing him do that would be really exciting. He's also a fantastic bowler and he bowlers with pace and bounce, which were certainly attributes that we were looking for specifically, particularly in our conditions.”
“Let's not forget what an exceptional fielder is to some of the catches he's taken in recent times. Fielding at Gully, he has been seriously impressive. That makes a really exciting package for us and we're delighted to have him on board at RCB. I guess now we can go into the auction with a pretty precise focus on what else we need to add to our squad.”