IPL 2023: Kane Williamson breaks silence on SRH releasing him: 'It wasn't a surprise'

New Zealand captain Kane Williamson has revealed his first thoughts on being snubbed from Sunrisers Hyderabad’s player retention list ahead of the Indian Premier League 2023 mini-auction. All 10 participating teams at the IPL 2023 season announced the player retentions ahead of the deadline for the same on Tuesday. The former SRH skipper Williamson was one of the biggest names in the list of 85 players that were released by different franchises. 

Williamson admitted to not being surprised after not being retained by SRH. He was retained for a whopping sum of INR 14 crore by the team ahead of the IPL 2022 mega-auction last year. This came after the Hyderabad-based franchise decided against retaining their skipper David Warner.

Meanwhile, revealing his thoughts after being released by SRH, Williamson said, “It wasn't a surprise when it [retention list] was officially released. That's the way it goes, I had a really enjoyable time at SRH, I have a lot of fond memories”. Williamson suffered a dip in form after taking over the full-time captaincy of the team in 2022, while the team went on to finish 8th in the points table. SRH picked up only six victories in the season, after winning five games in a row in the first half. 

Kane Williamson sheds light on his T20 future

On being asked if being released by SRH would make him reconsider his future in the shortest format of the game, Williamson said, “There are a lot of competitions around the world, and the IPL is certainly an amazing completion to be a part of. You see players play for different teams all the time. There are a lot of options, a lot of cricket, so for me, I love playing all formats”.

The New Zealand stalwart joined SRH in 2015 and was one of the main guys for the team since then. He scored a total of 2101 runs at an average of 36 after representing the team in 76 games. Under his leadership, Sunrisers reached the finals of the tournament in 2018, as Warner was banned due to the sand-paper gate saga. Interestingly, SRH released several other players and are headed into the mini-auction with a maximum purse value of INR 42.25.

List of players released by SRH ahead of IPL 2023 mini-auction

Kane Williamson, Nicholas Pooran, Jagadeesha Suchith, Priyam Garg, Ravikumar Samarth, Romario Shepherd, Saurabh Dubey, Sean Abbott, Shashank Singh, Shreyas Gopal, Sushant Mishra, Vishnu Vinod 

List of players retained by SRH ahead of IPL 2023 mini-auction

Abdul Samad, Aiden Markram, Rahul Tripathi, Glenn Phillips, Abhishek Sharma, Marco Jansen, Washington Sundar, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Kartik Tyagi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Umran Malik