As the two-day Indian Premier League (IPL) Mega Auction ended, many star players failed to attract even a single bid. The list includes the names of Australia cricketers Kane Richardson and Adam Zampa, who represented the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) last season.
As India became a hub of massive COVID-19 cases during April-May in 2021, IPL also witnessed a few withdrawals as foreign players chose to opt out of the tournament midway. Richardson and Zampa also did the same and now that both the Aussies have gone unsold, the pacer believes that their withdrawal last year has played a role in it.
"I was definitely more shocked for him. To be brutally honest, when we left last year, in early circumstances, I remember having a conversation with him. I said to him, look, this may come back and bite us, and at that time it wasn’t a priority for us to be there. We wanted to get back to Australia," Richardson said as quoted by ESPNcricinfo.
"So I think there’d be some kind of buyers that’d be pretty wary of picking us up thinking that we wouldn’t come again. I definitely think that’s a factor. I’m just speaking on what I think would be a factor in it. I don’t know. I’ve never had a dialogue with a franchise or a person that says that’s what would be the case. But I think I didn’t go the year before as well with the birth of my boy.
Richardson opined that the decision to leave India early has damaged his reputation as the franchises now have no faith in him.
"So my reputation probably is that in the last couple of years I haven't gone so it's obviously not something that I am. I try and play as much cricket as I can. But I think the circumstances in the last couple of IPLs have made me not go. But it's not a reputation I want," Richardson mentioned.
"So that's just us brainstorming. I think that'd be a point of them being wary of us turning up, but I'm not 100 per cent sure," the 31-year-old concluded.
Richardson had an extraordinary outing with the ball yesterday and claimed three scalps, giving away mere 21 runs in a T20 match against Sri Lanka.