IPL Auction 2020: 3 major talking points before the bidding war begins

#1 Will KKR buy back Chris Lynn?

Chris Lynn

Without an iota of doubt, Kolkata Knight Riders releasing Australia’s aggressive batsman Chris Lynn was the big surprise to emerge as the franchises announced their pre-auction squads. Incredibly, immediately after being released by KKR, the 29-year-old smashed a record 91 not out from 31 balls for Arabians against Team Abu Dhabi in the T10 league. While Lynn asserted he had no hard feelings over being released by KKR, one wonders if the snub actually inspired him to perform better. This particular innings actually led his Arabians team-mate Yuvraj Singh to openly state that KKR made a blunder by releasing Lynn.

The Aussie right-hander finished the T10 league as the top run-scorer with 371 runs in eight matches at a strike-rate of 236.30 with four fifties, the kind of form franchises, including KKR, will find extremely difficult to ignore. Having said that, Lynn had done little wrong in IPL 2019 to be overlooked in the first place. He posted 405 runs in 13 games at a strike rate of 139.65 with four fifties. In the year before that, he smashed 491 runs at a strike rate of 130.23. His consistency actually goes back to 2017, when he blazed away to 295 runs at a brilliant strike rate of 180.98 in seven games.

As mentioned at the beginning, Lynn has listed his base price at Rs 2 crore. Considering his current form and past record, he should end up getting significant bids. Whether KKR go all the way to purchase him back remains to be seen.