Apart from roping Australia’s Nathan Coulter-Nile and New Zealand’s Adam Milne, defending champions, Mumbai Indians added more firepower to their bowling arsenal in the IPL 2021 auction by signing South African youngster Marco Jansen.
The 20-year-old left-arm pacer has an excellent record in first-class cricket. He has scalped 52 wickets in just 12 matches and averages 20.51 with the ball in hand. Talking about the youngster, Zaheer Khan, MI’s Director of Cricket Operations, has revealed the reason why the franchise went for him.
Zaheer said that Marco is one of the highly-rated bowlers in South Africa. The former left-arm pacer also said that he was surprised as to why Jansen did not go for a high price and was expecting more franchises to bid for him.
“The youngster Marco (Jansen) has been a very highly rated bowler in South Africa. We were actually surprised to see him go at such a low price. We were expecting some more bidding around him,” Zaheer said in a video uploaded by MI’s official Instagram handle.
Quinton de Kock urged us to go for Marco: MI owner
Akash Ambani, the owner of MI, said that the franchise has been tracking Marco for the last two years, through their international scouting program. He added that Quinton De Kock insisted that Jansen is ‘completely ready’, and would be a good buy for Mumbai.
“We’ve been having an international scout program put in the place in the last few years like we have had an Indian scout program. This year he was in the Test squad going to Pakistan. We had a quiet word with Quinny (Quinton de Kock) and he said ‘you have to go for him, he is completely ready now’,” said Akash.