Cameron Green could be an explosive package for Royal Challengers Bangalore, especially at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, according to their director of cricket Mo Bobat.
"He's the ideal fit for us in that middle-order power role," Bobat said on RCB Bold Diaries. "He's a high-quality, skillful 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 really 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."
The Australia allrounder was traded by Mumbai Indians to RCB, shortly after Sunday's 5pm deadline for the IPL franchises to announce lists of players retained and released, ahead of next month's mini-auction. At the time of the announcement, Green was still among Mumbai's retained players. Bobat explained the reasons behind the last-minute trade.
"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," Bobat said. "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 obviously 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.
"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 obviously 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."
New RCB head coach Andy Flower was also enthused about having Green in the side. "Our focus area really was around the middle order and where we can improve that middle order, in case we do lose some of our top players at the top [order], which inevitably happens," Flower said. "So, that's one area and the other area was getting the balance right on the overseas players and how we allocate our resources in that area. Of course, even in these days of Impact Players, allrounders are still important. So, we debated how we can include allrounders in our XI and when we do so what options and the flexibility that gives us. We spent a lot of debate time and looking at rosters of players and their various skills, it's been a fascinating mini-project."
By trading Green to RCB in an all-cash deal, Mumbai added INR 17.50 crore to their purse, which paved the way for Hardik Pandya's return to Mumbai from Gujarat Titans. RCB now have INR 23.35 crore to fill up six slots at the auction on December 19 in Dubai.
Players released: Wanindu Hasaranga, Harshal Patel, Josh Hazlewood, Finn Allen, Michael Bracewell, David Willey, Wayne Parnell, Sonu Yadav, Avinash Singh, Siddharth Kaul, Kedar Jadhav
Players traded out: Shahbaz Ahmed
Players traded in: Mayank Dagar, Cameron Green
Players retained: Faf du Plessis, Rajat Patidar, Virat Kohli, Anuj Rawat, Dinesh Karthik, Suyash Prabhudessai, Will Jacks, Glenn Maxwell, Mahipal Lomror, Karn Sharma, Manoj Bhandage, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj, Reece Topley, Himanshu Sharma, Rajan Kumar, Vyshak Vijaykumar