Gambhir, Shami Among Players Released by DD

In what comes as a surprise move, Delhi Daredevils has released Gautam Gambhir from their IPL 2019 squad. Gambhir returned to DD for IPL 2018 on a mutual understanding, however, the player was dropped midway in the tournament last year owing to his poor run with the bat and DD’s awful start to the tournament. He then went on to warm the bench for the rest of the tournament as Shreyas Iyer was entrusted with the captaincy duties.

Australian hard-hitting batsman Glenn Maxwell also failed in IPL 2018 to contribute to the team and that prompted Delhi Daredevils to axe him from their squad for next year. Also, the release is no surprise after Cricket Australia’s announcement about their players’ limited availability for IPL 2019 with the ‘more important’ 2019 World Cup to be played after.

Indian pacer Mohammad Shami featured in only 4 matches for Delhi last year in which he picked up just 3 wickets. He is also not a regular in India’s limited overs format in the recent past and that might have prompted Delhi to let go of this player for the upcoming edition. Daredevils acquired the services of Liam Plunkett and Junior Dala in the last edition as replacements for injured Chris Morris and Kagiso Rabada. However, for the upcoming 12th edition, the franchise has released Plunkett and Dala but retained Morris and Rabada.

Colin Munro, Chris Morris, Kagiso Rabada, Sandeep Lamichhane and Trent Boult are the overseas players retained by Delhi. With 15 players in their current squad, Delhi Daredevils have 10 slots available out of which 7 slots have to be filled by Indian players and the other three are overseas player slots.

Retained Players for IPL 2019: Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, Prithvi Shaw, Amit Mishra, Avesh Khan, Harshal Patel, Rahul Tewatia, Jayant Yadav, Manjot Kalra, Colin Munro, Chris Morris, Kagiso Rabada, Sandeep Lamichhane, Trent Boult.

Released Players ahead of IPL 2019: Gautam Gambhir, Jason Roy, Junior Dala, Liam Plunkett, Mohammed Shami, Sayan Ghosh, Daniel Christian, Glenn Maxwell, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Naman Ojha.

Traded: Vijay Shankar, Shahbaz Nadeem and Abhishek Sharma to acquire Shikhar Dhawan from SunRisers Hyderabad.

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