Overview:

We cricket fans are quite familiarized with the IPL auction system, which enables players to switch IPL teams in subsequent seasons of the league. Through this process a player playing for CSK this season can go on to play for RCB in the very next one, and one of the best examples of this phenomenon is the renowned Indian wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthik, who has already played for six IPL teams in his inspiring career in the league since its inception in 2008.

Changing IPL teams during ongoing season:

However, have you heard about a player changing teams during an ongoing IPL season?

If you go through the history of the league you would rarely find any such player who has pulled of this stunning feat. But while scrolling through Instagram yesterday I was left awestruck after realizing that there is indeed one such player and that too an overseas one who has switched teams during an ongoing IPL season, and to my utter surprise this event transpired during this ongoing IPL 2024. But there’s quite an interesting backstory to my new found discovery.

Let’s dive into it.

Since I am an ardent fan of IPL, I keep myself updated with all the whereabouts of the league and how the teams are gearing up for the upcoming season, and while going through the feed of various IPL teams on Instagram I came across a reel that was going quite viral at the time, it was posted by one of the latest teams of the league- Lucknow Super Giants. The video was shot while the LSG players were on their visit to the newly consecrated Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, it was an intriguing spiritual video and that is maybe why it went so  viral.

But amongst the group of players in the video, I saw Keshav Maharaj from South Africa and came to the obvious conclusion that he was picked by LSG for the then upcoming IPL 2024 season.

However, yesterday when I was out there doing the same thing as always, I was flabbergasted to see Keshav Maharaj donning Rajasthan Royals training gear, I went back to the LSG video to recheck whether I had mistaken Maharaj for someone else and then rubbed my eyes for a second only to realize that Maharaj had been traded from LSG to RR during an ongoing season, something that had never happened in the league.

However it cannot be considered as a conventional trade off as LSG had never picked Maharaj in the first place, the Protea had joined the LSG camp to train with their players as a net bowler and not as an official player for the team. Now that Rajasthan need a replacement player to fill the the void left by Prasidh Krishna being unable to continue in the season owing to his injury, the RR management roped Maharaj into their team back from LSG.