Picture Credit: Instagram
The five-time champions Mumbai Indians have released the list of players they want to retain ahead of the IPL 2022 mega auction. Even though the Blue and Gold Brigade are a team that is studded with match-winners, they, unfortunately, had to part ways with most of their players as they could only retain four. Post announcing the players who will not be retained, the Rohit Sharma-led side took to social media to thank all the players for their services.
However, they seemed to overlook all-rounder Arjun Tendulkar, legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar's son, who was with the MI camp but did not play a single match for the franchise in IPL. In fact, the Mumbai franchise tagged each of the other 20 players in their social media post but Arjun's name was missing.
"We played as ??? ? We fought as ??? ⚔️ We won as ??? ? We lost as ??? ?We wrote our name in the ??????? ????? as ??? ? We will ?????? be #OneFamily ??ℝ???ℝ ?? #MumbaiIndians #IPLretention," their post read along with a picture of most players who will now be at the auctions but Arjun was nowhere to be seen.
Check out the post here:
Mumbai Indians have trusted Rohit Sharma to be their leader yet again along with Kieron Pollard, Suryakumar Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah also retained. Among other teams, Sunrisers Hyderabad could not reach an agreement with Rashid Khan for retention which means that the leg-spinner will be back in the auction pool.
Mumbai Indians
Retained Players: Rohit Sharma (Rs 16 crore), Jasprit Bumrah (Rs 12 crore), Suryakumar Yadav (Rs 8 crore), Kieron Pollard (Rs 6 crore)
Released Players: Chris Lynn, Anmolpreet Singh, Saurabh Tiwary, Anukul Roy, Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya, James Neesham, Arjun Tendulkar, Marco Jansen, Piyush Chawla, Roosh Kalaria, Quinton de Kock, Ishan Kishan, Aditya Tare, Jayan Yadav, Yudhvir Singh, Adam Milne, Dhawal Kulkarni, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Rahul Chahar, Trent Boult
Meanwhile, Jonny Bairstow, David Warner, Jason Holder, and Jason Roy were not part of the players retained by SRH. While the Orange Army has backed Kane Williamson to be their captain, they have also shown their trust with uncapped players Umran Malik and Abdul Samad.
Royal Challengers Bangalore retained Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell and Mohammed Siraj but could not find a place for last year's purple cap holder Harshal Patel and Yuzvendra Chahal in their team. Delhi Capitals also had to let go off Shreyas Iyer and Shikhar Dhawan but retained Rishabh Pant, Axar Patel, Prithvi Shaw and Anrich Nortje.
There is no official update on when the auction is going to take place but with the way things have unfolded, it seems like it won't happen before January 2022.