IPL 2023 Auction: Dodda Ganesh Lashes Out at RCB for Buying ‘Unknown’ Himanshu Sharma Instead of Karnataka’s Shreyas Gopal

Former India cricketer Dodda Ganesh took to social media to criticise Royal Challengers Bangalore for buying Himanshu Sharma, instead of Karnataka’s own Shreyas Gopal.

“You bid for an unknown leggie Himanshu Sharma but you don’t bid for Karnataka’s proven match-winner Shreyas Gopal. Typical RCB,” he tweeted.

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Malolan Rangarajan, Head of Scouting & Fielding Coach of RCB, defended the decision, saying the move justifies their scouting process.

“A very effective and good time to speak about our process, what we have in our CV from a scouting point of view, we have something known as the hinterland scouting. And we first identified him a year back and we’ve been tracking him ever since. And this year, we’ve been inviting him over and gave us some very good opportunity using our coaches, Sanjay Banger and our batting and spin bowling coaches, to pressure test him,” he said.

“Himanshu is exciting in a way because he’s from Rajasthan. He is club level cricketer, and he’s not played any competitive cricket. But he’s extremely skilled. And we are kind of looking into the future also, but knowing he’s still good, and we can develop him he’s a leg spinner. He is the leg spinner who has the ability to go both ways. Okay. And it comes out of our intelligence scouting, like I said, one of our many divisions of scouting, but we actually have your domestic scouting, you have oversees scouting and hinterland is the other one. So it’s nice to see that someone from that has come through now,” he added.

Apart from Himanshu Sharma, who was bought for INR 20 lakh, RCB have bought Will Jacks (Rs 3.2 Crore), Reece Topley (Rs 1.9 Crore), Rajan Kumar (Rs 70 Lakh), Avinash Singh (Rs 60 Lakh), Manoj Bhandage (Rs 20 Lakh) and Sonu Yadav (Rs 20 Lakh0.

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