England batsman Joe Root has expressed his disappointment at being unsold during the recent IPL auction for the upcoming season in January.

Root had entered the auction hoping that he will get to play in the IPL for the first time but none of the franchises picked him up despite his being nominated as one of the marquee players. He said, “I was disappointed. The reason I wanted to go out there was to play more Twenty20 cricket; it wasn’t to go and earn as much money as possible. I’m not in that position.”

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He further added, “For me, I wasn’t going to fit into any one of those [IPL] teams. It was disappointing but it’s also very understandable. Sides have a clear idea of what they want their makeup of their team to look like and they build around that. It gives me a really good period to make sure everything is set for the start of the Test season back at home but it would have been really nice to have had the experience and everything that the IPL brings to the table.”

Root was given a rest during England’s disappointing Trans-Tasman T20 tri-Series campaign, also involving Australia and New Zealand, with the expectation that he would secure an IPL deal and spend April and some of May in India. Given hectic England’s schedule for the rest of the year, it was decided by head coach Trevor Bayliss that the tri-series was the best time for a break.

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Root played a crucial role in England’s journey to the final of the last World T20 in India in 2016. He scored as many as 249 runs at a strike rate of over 146 and only Virat Kohli and Bangladesh’s Tamim Iqbal scored more. In the nearly two years since then though, Root has only played five T20Is. They play Australia in a one-off T20I in June which is followed by a three-match series against India.