SRH coach Vettori says losing Natarajan to Delhi Capitals a ‘huge loss’

Says nothing sets off Nattu's loss. Every team goes through it, whether you try and find the players early and...pounce on opportunities or you try and wait for the back end

Jeddah: Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Daniel Vettori was most excited about securing Ishan Kishan on day one of the IPL mega auction here but admitted that losing T Natarajan to Delhi Capitals was a loss.

Kishan, who made his name at the Mumbai Indians, was sold to SRH for Rs 11.25 crore on Sunday. The left-arm batter has had a tumultuous year, having lost his place in the Indian team as well as a BCCI central contract for defying the board’s diktat to play domestic cricket. However, he is back playing Ranji Trophy.

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SRH bought as many as eight players on day one including pacers Mohammed Shami (Rs 10 crore) and Harshal Patel (Rs 8 crore). However, they were not able to buy back T Natarajan and Vettori said nobody could offset the loss of the left-arm pacer.

SRH had retained five players ahead of the auction including skipper Pat Cummins, Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Heinrich Klaasen and Nitish Reddy.

“Nothing sets off Nattu’s loss (smiles). Every team goes through it, whether you try and find the players early and…pounce on opportunities or you try and wait for the back end,” said Vettori in a media interaction.

Natarajan was bought by Delhi Capitals for Rs 10.75 crore. “…we decided today to try and sense an opportunity when they came along and Mohammad Shami was one and then Harshal Patel, they were two guys that we potentially didn’t think would go for those prices (bargain buys).

“And then Ishan Kishan was a huge deal for us. We really wanted to secure him and we thought he, once again, we thought he’d go for more. so extremely happy that we got those three players as well as the rest,” said Vettori, who took time off from his coaching duties for Australia in the ongoing first Test against India.

Vettori said skipper Cummins is in agreement with all the picks. “Yes, yes there were (inputs from Cummins). A sad captain tonight (referring to Australia being behind in Perth), he had a hard day. I spoke to him earlier today (Sunday) and he understood the logic of the players that we’d gone for and then he had some ideas for obviously the rest of the squad building,” said the former New Zealand spinner.

Leg-spinner Rahul Chahar was a steal at Rs 3.2 crore. Vettori said they factored both recent performance and pedigree before going for the players. “We identified players that we thought had performed in the IPL previously. So we put a premium on that experience. And we’ve seen that pay off time and time again.