IPL History: 3 players that IPL teams must be regretting not retaining

The Indian Premier League has been a great platform for many uncapped players to showcase their skills. Some players have utilized the opportunity well and have developed into reliable players in the international arena, while others have disappointed.

But sometimes, a player just requires a bit more time to start executing the team's plans, and needs to be shown a little more patience. Many such players have been let go by their teams, and some of them have proceeded to blossom with their subsequent franchises.

In this article, we take a look at three cricketers that IPL franchises might be regretting not retaining.

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#3 Jos Buttler

Mumbai Indians (MI) need a quality opener who can partner Rohit Sharma. They are on the lookout for an exemplary opener who is ready to stand firm against the new ball, negate the dangerous bowlers and score quickly during the powerplay.

Jos Buttler has all these skills.

Buttler played for Mumbai Indians from 2016 to 2017 and was sold to Rajasthan Royals after that. Although Rohit has a genuine partner in Quinton De Kock in IPL 2019, Mumbai didn't do too well in the last IPL edition, owing to not having seasoned openers.

Buttler has been extraordinary for RR and is currently 10th in the Orange Cap list this year. The Englishman has scored 176 runs in 5 games this term, with a strike rate of 130.

Mumbai Indians would surely be regretting letting him go.

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#2 Shakib Al Hasan

Shakib Al Hasan (picture courtesy: BCCI/iplt20.com)

Shakib Al Hasan is one of the best all-rounders in the world. In IPL, he made several valuable contributions for Kolkata that helped the team to win the title twice - in 2012 and 2014.

KKR splurged a huge amount of cash on other famous performers and dropped this enthusiastic player in the 2017 IPL auction.

Shakib was purchased by SRH for INR 2 crore in the 2018 auction. He scored an important 28 runs and took one wicket while giving away just 16 runs in 4 overs in the qualifier match against KKR, showing his previous IPL team what they were missing.

Kolkata Knight Riders made a mistake by not retaining him.

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#1 KL Rahul

KL Rahul (picture courtesy: BCCI/iplt20.com)

Royal Challengers Bangalore didn’t retain KL Rahul ahead of the IPL 2018 auctions and immediately regretted their judgment when Rahul almost took KXIP to the playoffs single-handedly. Rahul went on to score 659 runs in 14 games at an astounding strike rate of 158.41 with an average of 54.91 in the 2018 edition.

If Rahul had stayed with Royal Challengers Bangalore, he would have easily solved their opening miseries. The RCB management must surely be feeling a lot of pain at not retaining him.