The Mumbai all-rounder Shivam Dube is on cloud nine after being picked for the T20I series against Bangladesh. Last year he was the talk of the town after being picked by the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the IPL 2019 auction for INR 5 crores and after a year, he might don the Blue jersey.

However, behind the scenes, Dube was in danger of losing his place in the RCB side for the upcoming IPL season. RCB was in talks with another franchise from North part of India to trade Dube, but the talks failed to materialized. The trade would have been outside the player purse which means the purchasing team would have paid some amount apart from protecting his auction fee.

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As per the sources of Mumbai Mirror, at some stage during the negotiations, the player himself got involved as he is entitled to a part of the negotiated amount. That would have been over and above his auction fee, but the Bangalore side decided to call off the negotiations suddenly.

In IPL 2019, Shivam played only in four games scoring only 40 runs at an average of 13.33 and SR of 121.21. He bowled only 1.4 overs, conceded eight runs and did not manage a wicket.

Things would have still gone through if Dube had not slammed a whirlwind century against Karnataka, during which one of his sixes went out of the M Chinnaswamy ground. Despite all this, Shivam would have had to leave the IPL side that is being led by the India skipper. But the selection to the India T20I side has put him in a place where he is a no-loss situation. Even if RCB releases him, he is certain to attract a good price in the auction on December 19 in Kolkata.

The decision to let Dube go was taken by the new RCB management under Mike Hesson and the new coaches. Though RCB didn’t respond to messages of Mumbai Mirror and the said IPL team denied interest in Dube, the newspaper has claimed that the trade was on the verge of being executed before talks fell through.