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IPL 2024: Price tag won’t affect Starc, Cummins even 1 per cent, opines Australia legend Glenn McGrath

IPL 2024: Price tag won’t affect Starc, Cummins even 1 per cent, opines Australia legend Glenn McGrath

IPL 2024: Price tag won't affect Starc, Cummins even 1 percent, opines McGrath

Former Australia pacer Glenn McGrath heaped praise on Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins ahead of the upcoming IPL 2024 edition, starting on March 22. Starc will be back in the IPL, after 2015, and will be representing the Shreyas Iyer-led Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) whereas Cummins will lead Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the upcoming season. Both the Aussies were in high demand during the IPL 2024 mini-auction in December 2023 and went for huge price tags. While Cummins was sold for INR 20.5 crore (205 million), Starc was the costliest; earning INR 24.75 crore (247.5 million).

McGrath opined on the Aussie duo and feels that both bowlers have enough experience under their belt and won't be bogged down by the price tag pressure. Speaking at the MRF pace foundation, the veteran said, "The money that they have received is incredible. But they are both very experienced players and know the game well. They are going to go out and play well as they have done in the past. I don't think it (price tag) will impact them even one per cent."

On Starc's much-awaited IPL return, after a long hiatus, the legendary pacer opined, "For Starc, he chose not to come to the IPL due to personal reasons. But he comes back and gets a record price. He will be looking forward to it. On his day, if he is moving the ball around, he will be as good as any other fast bowler."

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Ahead of his IPL return, Starc said while speaking to cricket.com.au, "It's been 8 years, I think. Back to KKR where I was supposed to be in 2018. So I'll be back there for the chance to pull on the gold and purple. I guess my memories are a few and far between of back in 2014 and 2015 with RCB but yeah, really excited to get stuck in. Obviously, a new group of players. A bunch of guys I certainly haven't met or been able to work with before."

"A couple of guys that I've, international guys that I've played against and come across. Yeah, it's gonna be exciting. It's definitely a new challenge. But yeah, it'll be exciting. It's always a bit of a circus when it is the best T20 league in the world. So, yeah I look forward to it," he added.

All eyes will be on Starc as well as Cummins in the upcoming season, which starts on Friday (March 22) with defending champions Chennai Super Kings (CSK) taking on Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in Chennai. It will be interesting to see how impactful Starc is for Kolkata whereas Cummins has a herculean task to take Hyderabad to the playoffs, who have finished at the bottom twice since 2021.

KKR squad:Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Shreyas Iyer (c), Phil Salt, Sunil Narine, Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Andre Russell, Venkatesh Iyer, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy, KS Bharat, Chetan Sakariya, Mitchell Starc, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Ramandeep Singh, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Gus Atkinson, Sakib Hussain.

SRH squad:Abdul Samad, Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram (c), Marco Jansen, Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar, Glenn Phillips, Sanvir Singh, Heinrich Klaasen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Agarwal, T. Natarajan, Anmolpreet Singh, Mayank Markande, Upendra Singh Yadav, Umran Malik, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Shahbaz Ahmed , Travis Head, Wanindu Hasaranga, Pat Cummins, Jaydev Unadkat, Akash Singh, Jhathavedh Subramanyan.