Virat Kohli insisted on having Dale Steyn in RCB, reveals Mike Hesson

At one point of time in the IPL auctions for 2020, it looked like South African bowling great Dale Steyn would face the embarrassment of being unsold. He did not get any bid in the first two rounds before Royal Challengers Bangalore roped him in in the final round for his base price of INR 2 crore. Mike Hesson, RCB’s director of cricket, has revealed that the pacer was always part of their plan.

He revealed that the franchise did not bid for Steyn early on in order to keep his price tag under check and also because early bidding for him would have affected the team’s strategy.

“We knew we wanted Steyn but we knew if we put a bid on him early, it might have gone up to three or four crores, which would have had flow-on effects,”  Hesson said in a video posted by the franchise as quoted by IndiaToday.

“It was the same with Isuru Udana as well. We thought Udana was going to be well sought after, so we had to slow-play that one a little bit. In the end, it worked out the way we wanted but it did require a sense of patience, which is not one of my main attributes,” he added.

He also revealed that captain Virat Kohli was keen on getting Dale Steyn on board, further adding that he and Kohli exchanged messages for nearly two hours to discuss Steyn’s inclusion for the upcoming season.

“I probably exchanged a couple of hundred messages with Virat for a couple of hours. I think he thought we went to sleep in the middle for a couple of hours as well, but he was well aware of what our planning was. He was keen at the end, as we were, to get Udana and Steyn,” said Hesson.

Steyn started his IPL journey with the same team and played for them for the first three seasons.