Sunrisers snap up Mustafizur Rahman of Bangladesh: IPL 2016

Bangladesh’s bowling sensation Mustafizur Rahman was bought by Sunrisers Hyderabad during the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2016 auction for $208,000 today.

The Sunrisers team owners and coaching staff decided to bring another left-arm bowler in their camp after New Zealand’s’ Trent Boult, and Mustafizur Rahman was the first name in their consideration set, IPL’s official Twitter says.

Hyderabad have managed to rope in big name players like David Warner, Eoin Morgan, Yuvraj Singh, Kane Williamson besides some good Indian cricketers. With a settled side and a penetrative bowling attack, they certainly rank as one of the favourites to go the distance in this year’s IPL extravaganza.

Mustafizur has played only seven T20 internationals in his career, and took 10 wickets at an average of 15. In nine ODIs, he has 26 wickets at 12.3 with 6/43 his best performance. He played two Tests and has four wickets in his bag. He became the first Bangladeshi cricketer to feature in ICC’s ODI Team of the Year.

In this year’s IPL, all squads can have a minimum of 16 players and a maximum of 27.

No franchise can have more than nine foreigners in their squads. The ceiling of expenditure has been fixed at Rs 66 crore.

After retention, release of players and trading, the teams left with the biggest purse are Delhi Daredevils (Rs 37.15 crore) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (Rs 30.15 crore).

The new teams have Rs 27 crore each after they were allowed to pick five players in the December 15 draft.

The two teams looking most settled are Mumbai Indians who have retained 19 players and KKR who have held on to 15.

351 players will be going under the hammer on Saturday. That includes 130 capped players, two players from Associate nations and 219 uncapped players. But if all franchises look to fill their quota only 116 players - including up to 36 overseas players - can be bought at this auction.