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The Royal Challengers Bangalore 9RCB) made another head-scratching buy in an auction by acquiring West Indies pacer Alzarri Joseph for a massive ₹11.50 crore on Tuesday.
With a base price of ₹1 crore, the 27-year-old garnered interest from several franchises. While the Delhi Capitals and the Chennai Super Kings were initially involved in the bidding war, the Lucknow Super Giants and RCB fought tooth and nail before the latter finally prevailed.
Ahead of the IPL 2024 Auction, Alzarri Joseph was released by the Gujarat Titans (GT) after being picked up by the franchise for ₹2.4 crore in 2022. Joseph played a combined 16 games for GT in 2022 and 2023 and picked up 14 wickets at an average of almost 35 and an economy of over nine.
While his wicket-taking ability is admirable, the West Indian has shown the tendency to be highly expensive. In T20Is this year, Alzarri Joseph has picked up 16 scalps in nine games, but his economy rate is a dismal 10.36.
With RCB playing half their matches on the batting beauty of the Chinnaswamy Stadium, the pacer could come under fire routinely. More than the purchase of Joseph, the spending of over ₹11 crore had fans on Twitter brutally trolling the RCB franchise.
Here are some of the best reactions:
RCB entered the IPL 2024 Auction with six slots to fill
The Royal Challengers Bangalore entered the 2024 IPL auction with a purse of ₹23.25 crore and a maximum of six slots, including three overseas, to fill.
In the first round of the capped players, they made only the Alzarri Joseph purchase and spent nearly half their budget remaining on the West Indian pacer.
Before the auction on the retention day, the franchise released a slew of players - Harshal Patel, Josh Hazlewood, Wanindu Hasaranga, David Willey, Wayne Parnell, Finn Allen, Michael Bracewell, Sonu Yadav, Avinash Singh, Siddharth Kaul, and Kedar Jadhav.
They picked up Aussie all-rounder Cameron Green the following day for ₹17.5 crore from the Mumbai Indians in an all-cash deal. With a couple of sets of uncapped players and another round of capped players still to come, RCB will look to cover up their weakness, particularly in the spin department.
The Royal Challengers are still searching for their elusive IPL title and missed the playoffs this year for the first time since 2019.
