IPL 2025 Retentions: Andy Flower, who is the head coach of Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and their director of cricket, Mo Bapat, explained why they decided to release their star pacer Mohammad Siraj, before the IPL 2025 mega auction.
What surprised everyone was the franchise released Siraj after supporting the fast bowler, ever since he made his debut in 2018. They retained just three players- Virat Kohli (Rs 21 crore), Rajat Patidar (Rs 11 crore) and Yash Dayal (Rs 5 crore). Their decision to retain Yash instead of Siraj for the next season did surprise a few.
During an interaction with the franchise post the retentions were revealed on Thursday, Andy Flower revealed that they are searching for a left-arm fast bowler and Yash Dayal comfortably fills that position.
"I'm sure one of the surprises around our retentions will be the fact that we haven't retained Mohamed Siraj. Mohamed Siraj is a successful international cricketer of some standing and has also been with RCB for the last eight years," Andy Flower said.
"We want to look for some particular skills in the fast bowling department. We've already identified and retained one of those particular skills that we want, which is the left arm angle and T20 skills that Yash Dayal brings us," he revealed.
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Siraj was one of the main players for the franchise, in the last few years he has also been one of the country's best all-format bowlers.
He has taken 83 wickets after playing in 87 IPL matches. The franchise retained him for Rs 7 crore before the IPL 2022 auction but despite that, he was released as he took 15 wickets in IPL 2024.
Big decision to make
Mo Bapat also emphasized that the franchise's think tank thought a lot before releasing Siraj and that they wanted to add another bowler to the bowling lineup, who would help them to perform brilliantly on batting-friendly pitches.
"Probably the discussion that took up the most time for us was our decision to whether we retain or release Mohamed Siraj. When he's got his tail up, he's got that real fire that you can see that becomes infectious for the rest of the team. He bounces quite strongly off Virat and those two as a combination have been quite powerful. It was a big decision for us to make to not retain Siraj because of all of those skills and attributes," he concluded.
The M Chinnaswamy stadium has generally produced batting-friendly pitches in the tournament in the last few years.
It would be interesting to see if the franchise uses their RTM card to buy Siraj again at the auction.