One team that left the auction table yesterday pretty satisfied was surely the Pune franchise. The Sanjeev Goenka owned the team, which will be led by the ever cool MS Dhoni raked up some respected names in their arsenal. The likes of Kevin Pietersen, Steve Smith, Faf Du Plessis and R. Ashwin are complete match winners on their day. Not to forget, their pace battery too looks well settled with experienced individuals like Irfan Pathan, RP Singh and Ishant Sharma settling in. The owners of the franchise had all the potential reasons to be happy after the auction proceedings were completed.
“Our focus was on having a strong playing XI, and I think, we have that in place,” said Sanjeev Goenka. “If you look at our squad, it is batting heavy with a lot of specialists in the line-up,” Goenka said. “We spent a lot of time discussing what we wanted. And I must thank Mahi (Dhoni) and Stephen for drawing up various permutations and combinations for every position in the line-up. Overall, I am quite happy with our squad.”
“We were very keen to have Pawan Negi, but then, you can’t always have it your way in an open auction. We have a balanced squad and the good thing is all the players would be available for the entire tournament. It should work to our advantage,” he concluded.
Rising Pune Supergiants squad: MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane, R Ashwin, Steven Smith, Mitchell Marsh, M. Ashwin, Faf du Plessis, Ishant Sharma, Kevin Pietersen, Irfan Pathan, Thisara Perera, Rajat Bhatia, Ashok Dinda, Scott Boland, Adam Zampa, Peter Handscomb, RP Singh, Ishwar Pandey, Ankit Sharma, Ankush Bains, Jaskaran Singh, Baba Aparajith, Deepak Chahar