An announcement by Parth Jindal, co-owner of Delhi Capitals, explains that all possible measures were put in place to retain Rishabh Pant before the IPL mega auction, but he left as this star wicketkeeper batter was on “different wavelengths” on how to run the franchise. The Capitals did not retain Pant, and during the mega auction, he was sold to Lucknow Super Giants for Rs 27 crore, becoming the most expensive player for the IPL-alleged history.
“The reason why he left us is a very different philosophy about how he wanted the interactions and activities of the franchise to be, and how we the owners wanted the franchise to be,” Jindal told ‘ESPNCricinfo’.
“Money’s never been an issue for Rishabh. And money’s never been an issue for us,” I guess the three of us (Kiran Grandhi, Jindal, and Pant) just had different wavelengths.
“Determined eventually to move on,” Jindal remarked as he added: “We tried everything, but he took the decision in the end.”
So what were the points of difference? “It means the way the franchise is to run, the decisions of the franchise, those types of things. There were certain expectations that he had and there were certain expectations we had. I can just say that we couldn’t align on these things,” he said
It was also agreed by Jindal that the franchise’s expectations from Pant in terms of leadership did not match that of the notion, which was conceived around an idea of long term ambition within him to captain India.
“We gave him some feedback regarding leadership. We told him ways in which he could improve on that, but we were quite clear that we know his ambitions, we know where he wants to go.
“He’s made it amply clear that his dream and desire is to captain India and that starts with captaining an IPL team,” he noted.
Acquiring Pant back from the auction was a tall order, according to the team management.
The minute we didn’t retain him, I knew he was gone. Again, the budget went extremely high for him, even though we did do the right-to-match for him at Rs 20.25 crore,” he added.
