For Mark Wood, family and England come ahead of IPL

AHMEDABAD: England pace bowler Mark Wood on Friday said that family and fitness were the reasons behind him pulling out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction at the last minute.

Wood informed the franchises hours before the auction that he would not be part of the IPL mini-auction held in Chennai on Thursday.

The right-arm pace bowler, who was expected to go for a very high price at the auction, said playing the long series in India and following it up with IPL would have been a very long affair.

"[A] couple of things really. First and foremost, it was my family. I'm going to spend six weeks here in India and it would have been another eight weeks on top of that so that's 14 weeks. We're in a strange situation with Covid-19 and we can't see our families while we're with England like we usually do and I wanted to be able to switch off, go home and recharge for the second reason which of course is being ready for England," Wood told the media on Friday.

Wood said he doesn't want to be affected physically or mentally ahead of England's busy year that includes World T20 and the Ashes series against Australia.

The 31-year-old pace bowler said that he decided to pull out as he did not want to upset any franchise at a later date. IANS

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