Australian leg-spinner Adam Zampa was retained by Rajasthan Royals for INR 1.50 crore in the previous auction. But he chose not to play in the tournament due to personal reasons. Now, he has shared why he made that decision.
The Australian cricketer was ready to play in the league this year, but he was tired from playing a lot of cricket since last year. Also, since the T20 World Cup is coming up in June, he thought it was important to take a break to rest his mind and body.
“There are several reasons why the IPL wasn’t for me this year. I think the most important one was the fact that it’s a World Cup year and I’m completely drained from 2023. I did the full IPL last year. The World Cup was three months in India as well,” Zampa told the Willow Talk podcast.
“So I had the best intentions of trying to play the IPL again this year. But once push came to shove, I felt like I just couldn’t offer the Rajasthan Royals the best version of myself and looking forward to the World Cup, that’s what’s more important to me, that’s for sure,” he added.
Zampa took eight wickets in six matches for the Royals last season and had a good partnership with experienced Indian spinners Yuzvendra Chahal and Ravichandran Ashwin.
“It came down to my decision being I probably need to put my body and my mental health first. “Then you throw a lot of other things into the equation as well, like the fact that I’ve got a young family. It’s not easy to spend nine weeks in India in my situation where I’m fighting for my spot in the team as well. It’s not like I can say to myself, ‘well, that’s alright I’ve got 14 games to prepare for a World Cup’. I don’t know whether or not that’s actually going to be two games or four games or six games. So I kind of worked out that maybe just to rest, putting my family first, putting my body first, was better for me,” Zampa said.
“It’s not an easy decision because you’ve always got that voice in the back of your mind going, ‘pulling out of the IPL, what are people going to say? What happens the next time you want to go to the IPL? Do people kind of paint you with that brush?’. But I wasn’t too fussed about it once I made that decision, I knew it was the right one,” he added.
