Lucknow list out Kl Rahul, Rashid Khan, Steve Smith and Suresh Raina for IPL 2022

KL Rahul is likely to lead the Lucknow franchise, according to reports. Apart from him, the new IPL 2022 team will sign Rashid Khan, Steve Smith and Suresh Raina before the mega auction. Since the start of IPL, the valuation of each team was around 4OO million on average.

But it will not grow exponentially after the bid 5000 and 7000 crores for two new teams from Ahmedabad and Lucknow respectively. The two new teams will also be given the right to buy players before the auction. The existing 8 teams are allowed to retain 4 players with a maximum of three Indian and one overseas or two Indians and overseas each.

As per various reports off-late, KL Rahul, after having mutually arrived at a mutual decision with his IPL franchise Punjab Kings (PBKS) parted ways with them and was later approached by the Lucknow-based franchise with an offer to lead their team in IPL 2022. The reports also suggested that he had accepted the offer to lead their side as well.

Rashid Khan, on the other hand, in line with the previous reports, is also likely to play alongside KL Rahul for the Lucknow-based franchise. The leg-spinner Rashid Khan was reportedly, unhappy with his previous franchise’s (Sunrisers Hyderabad) decision to retain him at the second spot.

There were also reports which suggested that both Rahul and Rashid were offered around INR 20 Crore and INR 16 Crore respectively by Lucknow before the retention deadline for the eight franchises.

Steve Smith is one of the best cricketers in the world. He is appreciated by fans and critics all over the world. His captaincy record in the IPL is also fair enough, 59.52% winning percentage as IPL captain. MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma are the only captains who have a better percentage than him, which speaks volumes about his captaincy quality.

This is one of the reasons why the Lucknow team will plan to take him. Steve Smith took Rising Pune Supergiant to the final of the IPL season and Sanjiv Goenka, the owner of the Lucknow team was also the owner of RPSG back then.

Also Read: CSK captain MS Dhoni Picked 4 players for IPL 2022 before Mega Auction

Mr. IPL needs no introduction, he has been with Chennai Super Kings from the start of the IPL. But in the past two seasons, his form has dipped a lot. He is even benched in a lot of matches. Considering only four players can be retained, he will surely be available in the auction.

Also Read: Ahmedabad brought Shreyas Iyer, David Warner and Hardik Pandya for IPL 2022

Suresh Raina can be signed by the Lucknow team as he is from Uttar Pradesh and can add value to the new team joining IPL from next season. He also captained the Gujarat team in 2016 and CSK a few times in IPL.