The 12th edition of the Indian Premier League has still some months to begin, but the franchises have already started their work to assemble their team.
Cricket news: Mandeep will now play for Punjab while Stoinis will feature for Bangalore
Earlier this month, the first off-window trade was made between Mumbai Indians who bought Quinton de Kock from Royal Challengers Bangalore. Mumbai had also released Mustafizur Rahman and Akila Dhananjaya to adjust their budget.
There are also rumors going on that Indian limited overs opener Shikhar Dhawan might leave Sunrisers Hyderabad. Both Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Daredevils are trying to rope in the explosive batsman.
While in the meantime, Punjab have traded Australian all-rounder Marcus Stoinis with Mandeep Singh, who played for Bangalore last season.
Punjab was captained by ace spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, and they started the last season impressively, but a string of defeats in the second phase of the tournament prevented them to reach the playoffs.
Punjab is one of the few teams who have not won the trophy even once. Their best performance was in 2014 edition where they reached the finals but were defeated by Kolkata Knight Riders.
Punjab had bought Stoinis for INR 55 lakhs in the 2016 season and the all-rounder had played 19 games all throughout three seasons, scoring 262 runs and bagging 13 wickets.
Punjab used their Right to Match (RTM) card to buy Stoinis back in the 2018 edition for INR 6.20 crores where the 29-year-old played only four games.
Mandeep was purchased by Bangalore last season for INR 1.4 crore but the player could not do justice to his price as he played 14 games and scored 252 runs at a mediocre average of 25. However he had an impressive strike rate of 135.48.
Meanwhile Bangalore decided to give Mandeep an emotional farewell as they quoted a Bollywood famous dialogue from the film ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ in their official Twitter handle. “@mandeeps12 tussi jaa rahe ho… tussi na jao #PlayBold forever,” their tweet read.