India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin was bought by Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) co-owner Preity Zinta at the IPL player’s auction held in Bengaluru.
While the Bollywood actress was in a mood to buy the maximum number of T20 specialists, she missed out to buy an experienced skipper.
However, Ashwin, who was earlier expected to don the CSK jersey again, has now been appointed as the captain of the KXIP side.
On Thursday, during an interview for Kings XI Punjab’s official website, Ashwin revealed the trump card of his team in the upcoming edition of IPL.
“For me, it is all about Yuvi Paaji trying to go out there and entertain the fans. It is very important we play an aggressive brand of cricket. And as far as I’m concerned, I would love to see him play freely and hit those big shots. I’m looking to give him as many overs as possible. I think he will be one of the best batsmen in our team. More than anything else, I would love to see the pie chucker in Yuvi Paaji,” Ashwin said.
“One of my strong points is to try and be innovative and try and change things up. And Yuvi will be a very, very internal part of our team. He will be a very big lynchpin for me to try and go for sort of advice on the field. he pie chucker in him is somebody that I really like. Many great batsmen including the likes of Kevin Pietersen couldn’t play him properly. We can utilize that and get a few big wickets this time,” he added.
“You’ve got Chris Gayle, you ‘ve got Aaron Finch, both of whom can open the batting. Aaron Finch is batting lower down the order for Australia, that is some sort of an option which we can look to create. Generally, combinations with a decent number of foreign bowlers and foreign batsmen – two and two will be a good combination. But with Stoinis around, we can look at playing three and one (overseas players). One thing you can be sure – I’ll never be predictable,” the KXIP skipper concluded.
So now, it would be interesting to see how Ravichandran Ashwin, who played for Chennai Super Kings in the first 8 seasons of the league, will come up with the captaincy burden this season.
KXIP team mentor Virender Sehwag and co-owner Preity Zinta has a lot of expectations from him, as the franchise is looking to clinch their first ever IPL trophy.
