Parth Jindal revealed why Rishabh Pant left Delhi Capitals, leading to his record-breaking transfer to Lucknow Super Giants at the recent IPL 2025 mega auction.
Delhi Capitals co-owner Parth Jindal disclosed that the franchise made every effort to retain Rishabh Pant before the IPL2025 mega auction. However, Pant and the team were on "different wavelengths" regarding the direction they wanted to take with the team, which ultimately led to his departure. As a result, the Capitals chose not to retain Pant, and the star wicketkeeper-batter was acquired by Lucknow Super Giants for a record-breaking Rs 27 crore in the recent auction, making him the most expensive player in IPL history.
"It was just a different philosophy of how he wanted the franchise to operate and how us - the owners - wanted the franchise to operate. That's what caused it (Pant’s departure). There's nothing to do with money,” Jindal told 'ESPNCricinfo'.
"Money's never been an issue for Rishabh. And money's never been an issue for us. I guess the three of us (Kiran Grandhi, Jindal and Pant) were on different wavelengths. He took a call at the end of it. We tried everything, but he decided eventually that it was time to move on," added Jindal.
"It means the way the franchise is to run, the decisions of the franchise, those kinds of things. There were certain expectations that he had and there were certain expectations we had. I can just say that we couldn't align on these things," he said.
Jindal also acknowledged that the franchise's expectations for the leadership role did not align with Pant's vision, which was focused on his long-term ambition of captaining India.
"We gave him some feedback regarding leadership. We told him ways in which he could improve on that, but we were quite clear that we know his ambitions, we know where he wants to go. He's made it amply clear that his dream and desire is to captain India and that starts with captaining an IPL team," he noted.
Jindal stated that the team management soon realized that re-acquiring Pant in the auction was an impossible task. "The minute we didn't retain him, I knew he was gone. We did do the right-to-match for him at Rs 20.25 (crore), but again, the budget went extremely high. We were okay to stretch up to Rs 22-23 (crore)," he added.
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