'Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav would've hit 25 crore in auction': MI retention strategy gets big thumbs up

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Mumbai Indians resolved the internal issues in the franchise and did an excellent job by retaining their Indian core for the upcoming season of IPL. The five-time IPL champions have retained Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma and Tilak Varma. They managed to retain a talented roster at a total cost of INR 75 crore, leaving INR 45 crore available to strengthen their squad at the auction. Despite not being the captain, Bumrah was chosen as the first pick for MI and signed a whopping INR 18 crore deal.

However, former India cricketer Aakash Chopra asserted that Mumbai did an outstanding job by retaining Bumrah for INR 18 crore as he would have hit the INR 25 crore mark in the auction. Bumrah is arguably the best T20 bowler at the moment in world cricket, and he would have attracted bids from all the franchises.

"What they have managed is an absolutely outstanding thing because Jasprit Bumrah would have taken 25 crores had he gone into the auction. If he had told any franchise that he wants 25 crores, anyone would have given him 25 crores, and I am pretty sure the other franchises would have approached him as well," Chopra said on his YouTube channel.

Heinrich Klaasen was the most expensive retention, with an INR 23 crore contract for SRH, while Virat Kohli and Nicholas Pooran were retained for INR 21 crore by RCB and LSG, respectively.

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Mumbai Indians have been home to Rohit Sharma since 2011, Jasprit Bumrah since 2013, Suryakumar Yadav for nine IPL editions, Hardik Pandya across eight campaigns, and Tilak Varma since 2022.

Chopra further suggested that Suryakumar Yadav would have also attracted a lot of attention in the auction and fetched around INR 25 crore, but with INR 16.35 crore, he displayed thatthere is no ego in the MI camp.

"They would have approached him and Suryakumar Yadav as well because he is not even the captain. Hardik (Pandya) is the captain and Suryakumar Yadav is the captain of the Indian T20I team. So there is no ego. He is ready to play for this franchise and for 16.35 crores. He too would have got 25 crores if he had said he wanted to go to the auction and some other team's captaincy as well," Chopra added.

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