Gautam Gambhir’s IPL career was thrown into darkness after he was released by Delhi Daredevils for next year’s edition. Gambhir was among the 13 players released by Daredevils before the auctions in December.
Gambhir, a two-time IPL winner as captain, was bought by the Delhi Daredevils and appointed as captain after he was released by the Kolkata Knight Riders. But six matches into the season, Gambhir decided to step down as captain as Delhi slumped to heavy defeats in five of those. Shreyas Iyer was appointed skipper for the remaining season and Gambhir, dropped after that match, did not get a single game in another disappointing season for the Daredevils.
Apart from Gambhir, the other notable players released by the Delhi-based franchise are Australia’s Glenn Maxwell, England opener Jason Roy and Indian fast bowler Mohammad Shami.
While Shami both Shami and Maxwell had underperformed in the previous edition, there is a chance that Jason Roy might not be available for entire season of IPL 2019 because of the ODI World Cup in June.
Earlier, they had brought Shikhar Dhawan in their squad using the player swapping facility. Daredevils swapped Dhawan, who played for the Sunrisers, with three cricketers – Abhishek Sharma, Vijay Shankar and Shahbaz Nadeem.
Since the combined value of those players was more than Dhawan's, SRH had to pay Daredevils an extra INR 1.75 crore (273,000).
Addition: Shikhar Dhawan
Released: Gautam Gambhir, Jason Roy, Gurkeerat Mann, Glenn Maxwell, Mohammad Shami, Dan Christian, Vijay Shankar, Abhishek Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem, Sayan Ghosh, Liam Plunkett, Junior Dala, Naman Ojha
Retained: Shreyas Iyer, Prithvi Shaw, Rishabh Pant, Manjot Kalra, Colin Munro, Chris Morris, Jayant Yadav, Rahul Tewatia, Harshal Patel, Amit Mishra, Kagiso Rabada, Trent Boult, Sandeep Lamichhane, Avesh Khan