IPL 2018: Captaincy Options for Kings XI Punjab in the 2018 IPL

The IPL auction concluded on a Sunday evening and all the teams have taken shape after two restless of the auction. The IPL franchise spent all in all a jaw-dropping 431.7 crores across two days to build a team for the 11^th edition of the Indian Premier League. Team owners have now partially done their job and have picked some of the biggest names in world cricket for the mega event in the coming months.

England’s all rounder Ben Stokes who hasn’t had a very cherishing time off –late finally got a reason to be happy as he was the most expensive player to be sold in the two-day program. The Rajasthan Royals bought stokes for a whopping amount of 12.5 crores.

Overall, Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab were the two sides in the auction which made most of their budget in the auction. Rajasthan made some big bids to get the players while Kings XI Punjab made smarter bids overall to get some of the most entertaining T20 players in the auction.

The biggest bid made by Kings XI Punjab was for Indian Test opener KL Rahul for a mesmerizing amount of 11 crores. KL Rahul was the costliest Indian player on day one of the auction. Veteran Yuvraj Singh has also returned to the side after a gap of eight years.

Punjab has also bought players like Aaron Finch, Mayank Aggarwal, Andrew Tye, Barinder Sran, etc. Punjab would also be happy after buying Chris Gayle after he remained unsold in the previous two rounds. Punjab bowlers must have taken a sigh of relief as Gayle has scored the most number of runs against Kings Xi Punjab than any other team.

However, after all these buys a big question mark lies on who will be Punjab’s captain in IPL 2018? Let’s check out some of the options with the team.

Yuvraj Singh-: 

Yuvraj Singh is a Punjab veteran. Singh started his IPL career with Kings XI Punjab and also led the side to the semi-final stage of the first edition. Yuvraj has experience of 120 IPL matches in which he has scored 2587 runs at an average of 25.6. He was also the captain of Kings XI in the first two seasons. Yuvraj has, however, struggled to find form.

Aaron Finch-: 

Aaron Finch became the first player to play for seven different franchise’s in the Indian Premier league after the Kings XI Punjab bought him for 6.2 crores. Finch is one of the most reliable and dominant opening batsman and has been running in great form off late scoring two back to back centuries in the first two ODI’s against England. Finch has a reasonable amount of captaincy experience as he leads the Australian T20 side and Melbourne Renegades in the Big Bash League.

David Miller-: 

Kings XI Punjab retained the services of David Miller in the 2018 IPL auction for three crores as the franchise availed their Right to match card of the South African batsman. Miller has played for Kings XI in the last six years after he was bought by the Punjab side for six crores in 2013. Miller has been an exceptional performer for the team and played some very memorable innings. Miller was made a full-time captain in 2016, but the team failed miserably in that edition and ended up at 8^th position on the table. Miller also has the joint fastest 100 in the T20I’s to his name in 35 balls which he achieved in October 2017.

Here’s the Complete Squad-:

Axar Patel, KL Rahul, Ravichandran Ashwin, Andrew Tye, Aaron Finch, Marcus Stoinis, Karun Nair, Mujeeb Zadran, Ankit Singh Rajpoot, David Miller, Mohit Sharma, Barinder Singh Sran, Yuvraj Singh, Christopher Gayle, Ben Dwarshuis, Akshdeep Nath, Manoj Tiwary, Mayank Agarwal, Manzoor Dar, Pardeep Sahu, Mayank Dagar

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