The curious case Josh Hazlewood! The Australian Cricket Team pacer has registered his name in IPL 2024 Auction after being released by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). What is even more surprising that the Aussie speedster won’t be available for IPL 2024 in its entirety.
Josh Hazlewood will miss more than half of IPL 2024. The Australian pacer will be in Australia for the birth of his child. As a result he will be out of action for two months, March and April. He is set to be back in early May, in the last phase of IPL 2024.
Will Teams target ‘Mostly Unavailable’ Hazlewood?
While the player has registered his name in the auction for a high sum of 2 crores, it remains to be seen if teams would be interested. No team would be willing to take the risk of taking a player who is likely to miss two third of the tournament. Buying Hazlewood would essentially mean taking a player only for the knockouts.
This seems to be a big gamble for any of the IPL franchise teams. Fans were shocked when RCB decided to release the bowler on IPL 2024 Retention day. Fans were further shocked a few days when Hazlewood registered his name in the IPL 2024 auction list.
Josh Hazlewood featured for RCB in IPL 2023 for just 3 games. He managed to scalp 3 wickets from those games with an economy of 8.44. Despite missing the majority of IPL 2023, fans expected RCB to retain their star bowler for this season. Former RCB star AB de Villiers too was surprised with the move.