Green on mega IPL pay-day: 'It doesn’t change who I am'

Australia all-rounder Cameron Green has said that he is keeping his feet firmly on the ground after he became one of the most expensive players of the 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) auction. Green on Monday picked his first Test five-wicket haul as Australia skittled South Africa out for a score of 189.

While the 23-year-old has established himself in Test cricket, he made his T20 debut during Australia's tour of India last year and turned heads with his extraordinary big hitting as a makeshift opener. It was enough for him to earn a last-minute call-up to the Australian squad for the 2022 T20 World Cup and he ended up playing three matches in the tournament.

"To be fair, I think I didn't do much to kind of earn that," Green said after the first day's play in the second Test between Australia and South Africa. "I just put my name into the auction, and it just happened. It doesn't change who I am or how I think and all the confidence I have in my cricket. Hopefully, I didn't change too much."

Green said that his Australia teammates have been pulling his leg ever since the auction happened. "Definitely the players can bring you back down pretty quickly," Green said. "It's a good group that we've got at the moment. Everyone gets around you when they need to and can bring you back pretty quickly when they want to. I think everyone was focused on Boxing Day. It's a fixture that you point out at the start of the year, and you look forward to so now that takes your focus 100%."

Green joins a star-studded MI line-up that will feature Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav and most likely, Jofra Archer for the IPL 2023. Green's stocks had risen earlier this year during the India vs Australia T20I series where the all-rounder scored 218 runs including two half-centuries at an impressive strike rate of 214.5 and was later included as a last-minute addition in Australia's T20 World Cup squad following an injury to Josh Inglis. After losing Kieron Pollard earlier this year, who announced his retirement from the IPL, Green makes for a like-for-like replacement with the ability to bowl at a decent pace.