Former Indian all-rounder Irfan Pathan hailed Devdutt Padikkal's move to the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) from Rajasthan Royals (RR) as fantastic ahead of the IPL 2024 mini-auction in Dubai on December 19.

In a double trade move between Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) and Rajasthan Royals (RR), Avesh Khan went to the Royals, and Padikkal joined Lucknow for the upcoming IPL 2024.

Notably Padikkal has been in blistering form in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy, scoring a total of 465 runs in five matches with scores of 114, 93*, 70, 117, and 71* in the competition.

Well, Pathan believes that the LSG identified promising domestic players, especially since they released eight players, seven of whom were Indian, on the IPL 2024 retention deadline.

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Irfan Pathan was quoted as saying by Star Sports: “There will actually be a lot of work done by their scouts because they have taken out a lot of domestic players. So domestic matches become very important. So, they must have identified players whom they want to get from domestic matches.”

Pathan signed off by saying, “Apart from that, it's pretty sorted. I think Devdutt Padikkal's move is fantastic. So, what they need to do is to get good domestic cricketers as a backup, not the frontline playing XI players.”

Here’s the list of the players retained by LSG:

KL Rahul, Quinton de Kock, Nicholas Pooran, Ayush Badoni, Deepak Hooda, K Gowtham, Krunal Pandya, Kyle Mayers, Marcus Stoinis, Prerak Mankad, Yudhvir Singh, Mark Wood, Mayank Yadav, Mohsin Khan, Ravi Bishnoi, Yash Thakur, Amit Mishra, Naveen-ul-Haq.

(With Star Sports/PTI Inputs)