In cricket, left-arm seamers are considered a rare breed and are always in demand due to the unique angles they generate while bowling to trouble batsmen. T20 cricket is no different to this thought process and the IPL auctions over the years have been a testimony to the same. In the 2019 IPL auction which was held in Jaipur on December 18th, Jaydev Unadkat was snapped up by the Rajasthan Royals for a whopping 8.4 crores.
Many pundits have hailed Unadkat's bid as a bit overrated as the seamer produced a rather mediocre performance in last edition's IPL. After a lacklustre 2018 IPL season, he was released by Rajasthan Royals who bought him back again, making a 3.1 crore profit out of the trade (He was bought by RR for 11.5 crores in IPL 2018 auctions). If we look into Unadkat's performance, it is not one to boast about. In the last IPL season, Jaydev picked up 11 wickets in his 15 outing for RR and proved to be very expensive with an economy rate of 9.65. He was outshone by Windies pace sensation Jofra Archer who picked up 15 wickets in just 10 matches for the Royals.
However, that didn’t lessen Unadkat’s value in IPL. He has consistently attracted humongous bids not owing to his wicket-taking exploits but primarily due to him being a left-arm seamer.
To be fair to Unadkat Undakat, he did have a good run in first-class cricket for Saurashtra in the lead-up to the IPL auctions and they too played a role for him being a top draw at the auction. But even he would agree, that if he had released the ball from a more common right-arm then he might have ended up with a lighter pocket.
If we go into the history of the IPL, left arm seamers have proved their mettle picking up a bagful of wickets for their franchises. There are examples aplenty with Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, RP Singh, Trent Boult, Tim Southee, Irfan Pathan and Mitchell Starc who have been bowling spearheads for their respective sides.
Be it, Shane Watson who was good at bowling the cutters or Siddharth Trivedi who was quite deceptive with his change of pace, Rajasthan Royals have always gone in for seamers who take pace off the ball.
If we closely have a look at the Rajasthan Royal's 2019 squad, they have a well-rounded pace attack. While Oshane Thomas, Jofra Archer and Varon Aaron are tearaway pacers, Unadkat can play the perfect foil with his mixed bag of deliveries.
It is not just Unadkat who has racked up an impressive bid, Punjab's left arm seamer Barinder Sran also racked in big moolah as he was bought by Mumbai Indians for 3.4 crores.
So in a nutshell, one can fairly conclude that cricket teams across formats and leagues love to have a left-arm seamer in their ranks who provide the much-required variety to the seam attack.