RCB trade Australia’s Jason Behrendorff to Mumbai Indians for IPL 2023

Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) has traded Australia’s left-arm fast bowler Jason Behrendorff to Mumbai Indians (MI) ahead of IPL season 2023. He was bought by RCB in the 2022 IPL Auction for his base price of INR 75 lakh but did not feature in a single game throughout the competition.

Behrendorff has been playing in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the last five years but he has spent four of those years on the bench. In the upcoming edition of the IPL in 2023, he will be representing his old team – Mumbai Indians, for whom he had previously played in 2018 and 2020. Though he couldn’t play in the IPL 2018 due to a back injury, Behrendorff returned for the 2019 title-winning season for MI and picked five wickets in as many matches, averaging 33.00 at an economy rate of 8.68.

𝗕𝗟𝗨𝗘 & 𝗚𝗢𝗟𝗗. AGAIN!

Back to apli Mumbai after 3 seasons. Pace, swing & experience ➡️ Jason Behrendorff, lai bhari 🫡#OneFamily #DilKholKe #MumbaiIndians @JDorff5 pic.twitter.com/N4zZBX4jt9

— Mumbai Indians (@mipaltan) November 12, 2022

In 2021, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) drafted Behrendorff as a replacement for Josh Hazlewood. But he did not make an appearance in the first half of the tournament, and Hazlewood returned when the competition resumed in the UAE.

RCB then picked Behrendorff for IPL 2022, as a backup to Hazlewood and England’s left-arm fast bowler David Willey. He had played an important role in his BBL side Perth Scorchers winning the 2021/22 title, picking 16 wickets in 13 matches, averaging 19.06 at an economy rate of 7.32.

Behrendorff has played nine T20Is for Australia and has picked 7 wickets with a best of 4/21. Overall, he has 117 wickets in 105 T20s at an economy of 7.41. Apart from this, he has also featured in twelve ODIs for Australia.

Jasprit Bumrah, Jofra Archer, Riley Meredith and Daniel Sams are some of the other fast bowlers Mumbai currently have in their squad. Mumbai Indians, who are the most successful team in the tournament’s history, finished last in the ten-team tournament in 2022, winning just four out of 14 games in the league stage.

The IPL 2023 auction will take place in Kochi on December 23. It will be a mini auction as opposed to the mega auction ahead of the 2022 edition. In addition to the money left over from their previous auction purse and the value of the players they release, each team will have an additional INR 5 crore (approx. US $607,000) to spend at this auction, making the overall purse INR 95 crore (approx. US $11.5 million).