5 reasons why Gujarat Lions lost the IPL at the auction table

#3 Unnecessary inclusion of Jason Roy

Jason Roy is a fantastic player but Gujarat already have three overseas openers in the team

Gujarat Lions in the 2017 IPL auctions bought only one overseas player, English batsman, Jason Roy. The aggressive English opener was impressive during England’s recent tour of India and was also an important member of the England team which ended as the runners-up in the ICC World T20 2016.

Although Lions purchased Roy at his base price, one might question this selection.

The Lions already have three overseas openers in the squad in Brenden McCullum, Dwayne Smith and Aaron Finch, who have plenty of IPL experience and are in good touch. Hence, Lions could have easily used the services of these batsmen at the top of the order. But, owing to some unusual strategy, the Lions included Roy and increased their tally of overseas opening batsman to four.

These four batsmen are too good to be left out, but at the same time, none of them are comfortable playing in the middle order. Hence, the batting order of Lions looks unsettled and highly vulnerable.

Thus the inclusion of Roy has, in fact, made the job of choosing one player a tougher task for the team management.