Mumbai Indians have got the playing 12; very happy to pair Jasprit Bumrah with Trent Boult: Akash Ambani
Mumbai Indians owner Akash Ambani on Monday expressed his delight after succeeding in his plans to pair the peerless Jasprit Bumrah with New Zealand pace great Trent Boult for the 2025 IPL.
MI have zeroed in on their playing 12 which includes the bowling partnership of Boult with Bumrah, said Ambani during the second day of the IPL mega auction in Jeddah.
The five-time champions had unsuccessfully paired Bumrah with Jofra Archer over the last two editions but the continuous absence of the English bowler due to injuries hampered the team's plans.
"Trent Boult and Bumrah are back, that's the partnership that we really wanted. (The) left-armers are a point of difference for us, especially in the bowling line-up," Ambani told the media during his press conference with Andy Flower, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru head coach.
"A lot of the things get dictated, as Andy will tell you, by auction order. You don't kind of get, you can't have a preference on a certain player. It doesn't work like that. We are very, very happy to get Boulty back, of the person (that he is) and of the skill set," he added.
Ambani said it took a lot of convincing for them to go after the rookie Afghanistan spinner Allah Ghaznafar, who was added to the roster for Rs 4.80 crore.
"It takes a lot of convincing for us to go for a foreign spinner," Ambani said.
"The ones that we have bid really high for in this auction (in the past), we went a couple of guys before him, but the list has included (Sunil) Narine, Rashid Khan and (Mohammad) Nabi as the all-rounder. But specialist foreign spinners, it takes a lot of convincing for us to go for."
"We really rated Allah as a package. So happy to have him," he added.
Ambani said losing out on Robin Minz, who was roped in by Gujarat Titans for Rs 3.60 crore in the last auction, was something that made him sad but the Jharkhand wicketkeeper-batter will grow several folds in the Mumbai Indians set-up.
"(He reminds of) MS Dhoni or Ishan Kishan? Both, right? Because keeper and left-armer. Because he bats down. Yeah, very happy with Robin," Ambani said.
"Robin, again, he was part of our development tour two years ago. (I) was very sad to have lost out on him last year. That was the one target that we lost out from our top targets last year.
"Our set-up will be a point of difference for him because he is a starter in our set-up," he said.
Ambani said picking South African wicketkeeper-batter Ryan Rickleton, who top-scored for MI Cape Town in the SA20 competition with 530 runs, was a part of the franchise's developmental program which they wanted to persist with.
"The first time we actually took Ryan, (which) we do now in the summer a development camp for our global players. And the last year we did it in the UK. Two years ago we did it in the UK. Ryan went off and scored a lot of runs there, performed in SA20," he said.
"That's something that we wanted to have that continuity factor through IPL too, and hopefully the other leagues," Ambani added.
