Punjab Kings Head of Cricket Development Sanjay Bangar has revealed the players that they were targeting the IPL 2024 auction, held at the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai on Tuesday, December 19.

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Speaking in a video released by PBKS, Bangar explained that they were targeting three Indian fast-bowlers at the auction. Punjab Kings ended up buying pacer Harshal Patel for a whopping Rs 11.75 crore in Dubai.

“Earlier we had Mohammed Shami so there were three bowlers who were on our target list- Umesh Yadav, Shardul Thakur, who is obviously more in the all-rounders category, and Harshal Patel. So those are the three players that we were targeting,” said Bangar.

He went on to say that Harshal could be used in the middle and death overs and will provide the team the space to use Arhsdeep Singh and Kagiso Rabada in different scenarios. PBKS finished eighth in the IPL 2023 points table and are one of only three founding teams to not win an IPL title.

“Harshal Patel for his expertise of bowling in the middle overs and in the last five overs comes in handy because it gives us options to use Arshdeep and Rabada if they play in a different fashion. So that is an added dimension to our bowling attacks,” Bangar added.

Bangar was appointed the Head of Cricket Development of PBKS ahead of the 2024 season. His IPL coaching career kicked off when he was appointed as the assistant coach for Kings XI Punjab in January 2014.

During that season, he was promoted to head coach and led the team to their best performance to date, reaching the final where they were defeated by Kolkata Knight Riders. He continued to coach Kings XI Punjab for three years until he had to step down due to BCCI’s conflict of interest rules.

PBKS SQUAD FOR IPL 2024

Shikhar Dhawan (C), Matthew Short, Prabhsimran Singh, Jitesh Sharma, Sikandar Raza, Rishi Dhawan, Liam Livingstone, Atharva Taide, Arshdeep Singh, Nathan Ellis, Sam Curran, Kagiso Rabada, Harpreet Brar, Rahul Chahar, Harpreet Bhatia, Vidwath Kaverappa, Shivam Singh, Harshal Patel, Chris Woakes, Ashutosh Sharma, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Shashank Singh, Tanay Thyagarajann, Prince Choudhary, Rilee Rossouw.