What the franchises would look for in the IPL 2017 Auction

5. Rising Pune Supergiants

The franchise captained by the mighty MS Dhoni made its debut in the league last season. It had a star-studded line-up but injuries to their top players affected their performance big time and as a result, they finished second from the bottom on the points table. Their top players in the squad currently include:

Openers: Ajinkya Rahane, Mayank Agarwal, Usman Khawaja

Middle Order Batsmen: Faf du Plessis, Steven Smith, MS Dhoni (c & wk)

All-rounders: Mitchell Marsh, Rajat Bhatia, Baba Aparajith

Spinners: Ravichandran Ashwin, Adam Zampa, Ankit Sharma

Fast bowlers: Ishwar Pandey, Ashok Dinda, Jaskaran Singh

What’s required

They have released a handful of fast bowlers like Ishant Sharma, Irfan Pathan, Thisara Perra, Rudra Pratap Singh and Albie Morkel and so, there is a whole new bunch of pacers that need to be slotted in. They have INR 17.5 crores and space for 4 foreign players and hence they can buy even two foreign fast bowlers or a pacer and a pace bowling all-rounder that can serve as a backup for Marsh.

Ben Stokes and Corey Anderson could be the favourites for this franchise as well. There are some other options too like Trent Boult, Chris Woakes and Angelo Matthews. They have enough firepower with Ashwin and Zampa as the spinners.

Their middle order consists of 3 overseas batsmen and they can plan to take an Indian batsman to make the side more flexible. The fitness of Dhoni doesn’t usually demand a backup keeper and if that indeed occurs, they have Ankush Bains in the side who can don the gloves.