New Delhi, Nov 16 () On Tuesday, Kane Williamson was one of the 12 players let go by the Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL 2023 retention day ahead of the IPL mini-auction happening in Kochi on December 23.
Initially, Hyderabad had named Williamson as their captain ahead of the IPL 2022 season and also retained him for a whopping sum of INR 14 crores.
But Hyderabad won only six out of 14 matches in the tournament comprising ten teams, despite being on a five-match winning streak in the first half of the IPL 2022 season.
Coming back into competitive cricketing action after nursing a long-standing troublesome elbow injury, Williamson was far from his best with the bat, scoring just 216 runs in 13 innings at a strike rate of 93.50 and averaging 19.64.
Former Australia all-rounder Tom Moody, who was Hyderabad’s head coach in the 2022 IPL, feels it will be an interesting watch on how the franchise goes about things after releasing Williamson.
“Yeah, it’s going to be very interesting to see what the new management does at Sunrisers with regards to Kane, because you make a big decision to begin with in retaining a player like Kane Williamson.
“At the beginning of a major auction, you back him as your leader, everyone recognises that he’s one of the games great modern leaders. Yes, he had a poor season, yes, he had injury problems over the last 12 months,” said Moody on ‘IPL – Special Retention Show’ on Star Sports.
Moody feels that money may have also played a part in Williamson’s release, which frees a huge chunk in Hyderabad’s budget ahead of the mini-auction for IPL 2023. “But it’s clear they have made a decision to change such a significant pillar in what their future was going to look like when they first sat down before the big auction.
“I totally get the decision on the basis of the 14 crore, that’s a huge amount of money, particularly for a foreign player. For an Indian player? Certainly not.
“And we have always got to look at that kind of relationship between the supply and demand of your overseas players against the supply and demand of your high quality Indian players. And you’re always going to have to pay, and quite rightly so, pay big money for your top Indian players.”
Overall, Williamson played for Hyderabad in eight seasons of the IPL, making 2021 runs at an average of 36.22 and strike rate of 126.03. Under his leadership, Hyderabad’s best result was runners-up finish in IPL 2018, after losing to Chennai Super Kings in the final. In that season, Williamson was the highest run-getter of the tournament with 735 runs at an average of 52.50 and strike rate of 142.44.
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