T20 Mumbai League: Teams not happy with limited pool of 33 FC players

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The player auction for the Mumbai Cricket Association's T20 Mumbai League was a testing time for coaches on Saturday. As five first-class cricketers have to be part of each team, team owners and coaches had to compromise while bidding from the available pool of 33 players.

"It's very unfair that this is a pool of only 33 first-class players. In addition to that, three of the 10 icon players are not available for the full tournament. It is very tough to get good first-class players, but somehow we managed," Amit Dani, the coach of Mumbai South, told mid-day on Saturday.

Current Mumbai bowling coach and coach of North West team, Omkar Salvi echoed the same feelings. "There is a very limited pool of first-class players and we had very limited options. That's why we started [bidding] aggressively and it favoured us," said Salvi.

Another former Mumbai cricketer - Vinayak Samant - who will coach Mumbai North Central - said: "This pool of 33 first-class players is insufficient. We had to comprise. There should be a bigger pool for this category."

Even though they were not among the icon players with a base prize of Rs four lakh, three Mumbai cricketers - Jay Bista, Shivam Dube and Shashank Singh - earned Rs 5 lakh each at the T20 Mumbai League auction on Saturday. Bista and Dube (base prize of Rs 1.50 lakh each) and Singh (Rs 1 lakh) were picked up by Mumbai North East, Mumbai South and Mumbai South Central respectively.

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