Both SRH and CSK were interested in Saifuddin, but back injury caused him to miss those chances.
So far three Bangladeshi players have featured prominently in the IPL- Tamim Iqbal, Shakib-Al-Hasan, and Mustafizur Rahman, and Saifuddin could have been the fourth one, if only he had managed to keep himself fit. He revealed that both Chennai Super Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad had shown interest in him.
"You can say playing in the IPL is my dream. When I played in the last match at the Lord’s, (against Pakistan in the 2019 World Cup), VVS Laxman came to enquire about me. Our (Bangladesh) performance analyst is India’s Srinivas Chandrasekharan and he works in the Sunrisers Hyderabad as well. He wanted to know how I would fare in the IPL. But injury destroyed everything,” he told BDCrictime.
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Saifuddin suffered a severe back injury missing the second half of 2019 and also missed a chance to feature in the IPL as well. He also said he got to know about CSK's interest through analyst Lakshmi Narayan who has worked both at Super Kings and at the Dhaka Platoon.
"I was close to a chance. I heard that CSK had a discussion about me. Laxmi was our (Dhaka Platoon) video analyst as well. He told me, ‘Dhoni has talked about you’. I replied, “You do everything, but have an allergy towards Bangladesh cricketers.”
"He said, ‘See, I’m not lying’. I said, ‘We are not someone to be pushed back’. He replied ‘See, I sent this bowling video of yours to Dhoni’. In the video, I could see Dhoni telling, ‘Ok. They wanted to take me, but I missed due to injury. Hence they didn’t show interest in me and Josh Hazlewood was picked,” Saifuddin said.
The Bangladeshi star also spoke about the experience of bowling to the likes of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli during the warm-up match in the World Cup last year.
"During our practice match at Cardiff, Rohit Sharma was at the striker’s end with Virat Kohli as the non-striker. I told Rohit, ‘it’s been 10 to 12 years since I’ve been watching you guys on TV, both of you are our dream cricketers. Now I’m bowling to you and I don’t know what to do,’" he said.
"Then Rohit laughed at me and said ‘Good luck’. Then I was trying my best to make sure that I got at least one of them out. Luckily, I was able to dismiss Kohli,” Saifuddin said.
"We don’t want to sledge them. We have grown up, seeing them play and we can’t imagine sledging them. Cricket is a gentleman’s game and should remain that way. Also, because there are demerit points, we have to be careful," Saifuddin signed off.