The veteran Australian pacer, Mitchell Starc, who had opted out of IPL 2020, was welcomed to the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) franchise by his Australia teammate David Warner in a bizarre Instagram post. After Australia beat New Zealand in the first Test on Sunday, David Warner shared a picture with the man-of-the-match Mitchell Starc and his SRH teammate Kane Williamson on his Instagram story.

Captioning his Instagram story Warner wrote: “Welcome to the @sunrisershyd @mstarc56”. Incidentally, David Warner’s post comes a few days before the IPL 2020 auction, which is slated to take place on December 19 in Kolkata.

Among the notable players, England’s Joe Root had also not registered for the IPL 2020 auction. A total of 332 players will go under the hammer during the auction.

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Starc, 29, was the leading wicket-taker in the 2015 and 2019 editions of the ICC World Cups. He has featured in 85 One-Day Internationals (ODIs), in which he had scalped as many as 172 wickets, at an average of 20.99. He has the best bowling figures of 6 for 28 in this format.

The lanky southpaw pacer has also played 28 matches in the shortest format of the game and picked 39 wickets at an average of 18.41. He has featured in 27 IPL matches and averages 13.71 in the lucrative tournament.

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Starc will be next seen in action in the second of the three-match Test series between Australia and New Zealand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, starting from December 26. The final Test will be played at the Sydney Cricket Ground from January 3, 2020. He was adjudged as man of the match in the first Test in Perth for scalping 9 wickets.