‘He’s the ideal fit for us’ – RCB’s Director of Cricket on trading Cameron Green from Mumbai Indians ahead of IPL 2024

Royal Challengers Bangalore recently made a historic trade after the closure of the retention window for the IPL 2024 as they bought Cameron Green from Mumbai Indians ahead of the IPL auction. RCB’s director of Cricket Mo Bobat recently talked about the strategies behind Green’s inclusion in the team. 

Royal Challengers Bangalore retained players: Faf du Plessis (C), Glenn Maxwell, Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar, Anuj Rawat, Dinesh Karthik, Suyash Prabhudessai, Will Jacks, Mahipal Lomror, Karn Sharma, Manoj Bhandage, Vyshak Vijay Kumar, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj, Reece Topley, Himanshu Sharma, Rajan Kumar

Royal Challengers Bangalore released players: Wanindu Hasaranga, Harshal Patel, Josh Hazlewood, Finn Allen, Michael Bracewell, David Willey, Wayne Parnell, Sonu Yadav, Avinash Singh, Siddharth Kaul, Kedar Jadhav

Royal Challengers Bangalore remaining slots: RCB has 19 players in the squad and can look to add six players including three overseas ones in the auction. 

Royal Challengers Bangalore purse remaining: RCB have already spent 76.75 crore on their current squad and will enter the auction with Rs 23.25 crore still to spend.

RCB Director of Cricket on Trading Cameron Green from Mumbai Indians 

Mo Bobat highlighted that Cameron Green can be a perfect middle-order all-rounder for RCB and buying him in the auction could have been a huge miss. He said,  “He’s the ideal fit for us in that middle-order power role. He’s a high-quality, skilful and powerful batsman. He’s got the game against both pace and spin. He’s got international experience across formats and I’m sure he will enjoy batting at the Chinnaswamy. So, seeing him do that will be exciting. He’s also a fantastic bowler and he bowls with pace and bounce, which were certainly attributes we were looking for, particularly in our home conditions. Let’s not forget what an exceptional fielder he is. Some of the catches he has taken in recent times fielding at gully is seriously impressive.”  

He further added, “If I go back to mid-morning yesterday [Sunday], we were pretty clear on our retentions and release decisions and we had communicated it to all of our players. We were pretty clear on what that meant for our auction priorities. So, felt like we were going to have a fairly quiet afternoon. If you look at the retentions and the decisions we made, we’ve got a really strong top order and we wanted to enhance the middle order by adding a little bit of power.”

“With a couple of hours off the retention and release deadline, we were made aware of Cameron’s potential availability for trade, which we had to take seriously. So, having spoken to the guys at MI, we got a small group of us together at our end 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,” he said. 

“Essentially, we were trying to weigh up whether we take the risk of someone else picking up Cameron Green now, which could have happened before the deadline…hoping he makes it to the auction as a released player, but somebody else could’ve picked him up, which was the case. Even then if you get to the auction, there’s no guarantee that you get him at the auction because you can easily be outbid,” he concluded.