'We value Piyush Chawla's experience highly' - Zaheer Khan on signing the spinner

Expressing his excitement over having Piyush Chawla in the Mumbai Indians camp for IPL 2021, Zaheer Khan has expressed the reason behind the team buying the veteran leg-spinner in the auction earlier this year. The Mumbai-based outfit will be Chawla’s fourth in the IPL. He started his IPL career with Punjab Kings (then Kings XI Punjab) in 2008 and remained with them till 2013.

From 2014 to 2018, he plied his trade for Kolkata Knight Riders and won an IPL trophy with them. In 2020, he played for Chennai Super Kings but failed to impress. In seven games, he picked up six wickets and conceded more than nine runs per over as CSK failed to do well in IPL 2020. Following their disastrous campaign, CSK released Chawla.

Later in February, Mumbai Indians signed up the veteran spinner for Rs 2.4 crore. The big amount raised a number of eyebrows as Mumbai already had some good spinners in their ranks. And Zaheer has now revealed the reason behind buying Chawla. Mumbai Indians’ Director of Cricket Operations feels younger spinners like Rahul Chahar will benefit from having a veteran leg-spinner like Chawla around them.

“Piyush Chawla is not only going to bring game or skill sets to the team, but also his wealth of experience. He has been in pressure situations, he has a bigger role to play. He is going to be the senior-most spinner in the squad. With his experience, I am sure he will be able to mentor all these spinners which we have in the squad. Sharing those experiences has always worked,” explained Zaheer while speaking in the video posted on Mumbai Indians’ YouTube channel.

“We value his experience really highly. We have Rahul Chahar also in the team who is an upcoming young talent. The experience of Piyush Chawal is purely going to help him as well. He has been bowling with the new ball, so that also has been a point of discussion when we were looking to find that experienced leg spinner,” he added.

Rohit Sharma on Piyush Chawla:

Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma also spoke on the addition of Piyush Chawla in the team. Rohit started by saying that he knows Piyush well since he played with him since his U-19 days. He went on to hail the leggie as ‘a very attacking bowler’ and said that Mumbai wanted a similar type of bowler. Rohit also pointed out Chawla’s experience as a big factor.

“I have played with Piyush since my U-19 days, and I know he is a very attacking bowler which is something we wanted in our spin bowling department. He was a good buy, to get him in our squad. One of the highest wicket-takers in the IPL and has played a lot of games. He knows the format, he knows the oppositions, he knows the players,” stated Sharma.