The 17th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is approaching fast with the schedule expected to be announced soon and Dushmantha Chameera is the latest to feature in the IPL. Meanwhile, like every year, certain players are starting to pull out for various reasons and the latest to join the list is Gus Atkinson who was picked by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR).
The franchise had signed the England fast bowler for INR 1 crore at the IPL 2024 auction last year in December. KKR have signed Sri Lanka pacer Dushmantha Chameera as his replacement for the upcoming season. This will be the fourth team for Chameera in the cash-rich league having been part of Rajasthan Royals, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Lucknow Super Giants before.
As for Atkinson, he has been ruled out after the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) decided to manage his workload after a long time away from home during the winter. He played three matches for England during the World Cup in India and then toured the West Indies for ODI and T20I series in December 2023 before again returning to India for the ongoing five-match Test series.
However, Atkinson is yet to feature in the series even as England have squandered their early lead and are now lagging 1-2 after losing the third Test in Rajkot by a mammoth margin of 434 runs.
Kolkata Knight Riders – KKR best playing XI in IPL 2024
Who is Dushmantha Chameera?
Coming back to Chameera, he played for the Abu Dhabi Knight Riders, the UAE affiliate of the IPL franchise in the International League T20 (ILT20), picking up 10 wickets in seven matches including a four-wicket haul to his name. As far as his IPL career is concerned, Chameera has played 12 matches so far picking up nine wickets at an economy rate of 8.73.
Overall, Dushmantha Chameera has played 119 T20 matches in his career accounting for 118 scalps at an average of 28.36 and an economy of 7.98 with four four-wicket hauls to his name. For Sri Lanka, he has featured in 55 T20Is picking as many wickets. More than anything, Chameera is also known for his pace having clocked more than 140 kph during the recent ILT20 matches.
Interestingly, Mitchell Starc is the only other specialist overseas fast bowler in the KKR squad and was bought for a massive amount of INR 24.75 crore during the auction last year. Andre Russell is another pace bowling option for them among foreign players while the likes of Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana and Chetan Sakariya are other Indian fast bowlers.
Meanwhile, the schedule for IPL 2024 is yet to be unveiled but is likely to commence in the last week of March and go on until the last week of May.
KKR squad for IPL 2024
Shreyas Iyer (C), Srikar Bharat, Manish Pandey, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ramandeep Singh, Nitish Rana, Jason Roy, Sherfane Rutherford, Rinku Singh, Venkatesh Iyer, Sunil Narine, Anukul Roy, Andre Russell, Vaibhav Arora, Dushmantha Chameera, Harshit Rana, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Chetan Sakariya, Mitchell Starc, Suyash Sharma, Varun Chakravarthy, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sakib Hussain
