ICC reacts after Sam Billings reveals how his girlfriend trolled him after he went unsold in the IPL 2021 auction

Several eyebrows were raised when Sam Billings had kept his base price as INR 2.0 crores for the IPL auction 2021. But, considering his exploits for his county team, Kent and England in T20Is, some had also thought that the talented wicketkeeper-batsman might get picked. However, that wasn’t to be the case, as he went unsold on Thursday. 

As his name was called during the auction, no teams showed any interest in him. After he was announced unsold, Billings took to Twitter to share a funny incident. In the tweet, Billings said that after the bidding happened, his girlfriend turned to him and asked him why he wasn’t a bowler instead of a wicketkeeper. Billings tweeted, “My girlfriend Sarah just turns to me and goes… ‘why aren’t you a bowler?’”

After Billings tweeted, the official account of the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Twitter replied to the tweet. In that tweet, ICC shared the bowling stats of Sam Billings. In that image, it was seen that Billings who generally keeps wickets has almost never bowled in an official match. It was seen that he bowled only once in a first-class match, where he bowled one ball and was hit for a boundary. 

As his girlfriend tried to troll him, ICC also tried trolling him by reminding him of his bowling record. In the caption of the image, ICC wrote, “The only way is up.” After he saw the reply, Billings responded to the tweet hinting that he might be bowling leg-spin. Billings wrote, “Leg spin incoming”.

Billings had recently appeared in the Big Bash League 2020-21 where he had played for Sydney Thunder and performed with the bat. It was quite interesting that on Thursday, during the IPL auction, there was not much interest for the wicketkeepers. However, fast-bowlers went for really high bids. For instance, Chris Morris was sold to Rajasthan Royals for INR 16.25 crores, while Australian bowler Jhye Richardson went for INR 14 crores. On the other hand, wicketkeeper batsmen such as Alex Carey and Glenn Philips went unsold in the auction.