Five-time IPL champions and the joint-most successful team in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL) – Chennai Super Kings are regarded as one of the best and the most-prestigious teams in the history of the cash-rich T20 league.
They are often lambasted for signing players who are on the wrong side of 30, but, despite the criticisms, they always find a way to silence their critics and their history of lifting the IPL Trophy five times goes on to show how consistent they have been over the years.
Their best captain MS Dhoni continues to remain the main player of the franchise and even though he resigned from the captaincy of the team and Ruturaj Gaikwad took over the reins of the team from him, the Yellow Army still managed to perform well last year despite not qualifying for the Playoffs.
However, there are doubts regarding the participation of MSD in next year’s edition of the T20 League. India’s Cricket Governing Body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has not officially revealed the number of players that are going to be allowed to be retained by each participating franchise and there’s no official confirmation regarding the return of the Right-To-Match (RTM) cards as well.
Nevertheless, the Chennai-based franchise are looking forward to the upcoming mega-auction as they look to make a lot of changes in their squad and choosing to stick with the players who are already past their prime might not be a successful move. The article below will cover the three players that the franchise might not retain ahead of the IPL 2025’s mega auction:
Three Players Chennai Super Kings might not retain ahead of next year’s mega-auction:
3 . Ajinkya Rahane
CSK’s 36 year-old Ajinkya Rahane who had an amazing IPL 2023, scoring the second- highest number of runs for the franchise in that season, did not have a good season at all for the Chennai-based team in the previous edition of the cash-rich T20 League. He wasn’t able to play with the same aggressive intent he showed in IPL 2023 and managed to score just 242 runs.
He failed to score a single half-century in the previous season in contrast to the two he scored in IPL 2023. His strike-rate was also pretty low at 123.47 which made matters even worse for the veteran.
Considering just 5-6 players will be allowed to be retained by each IPL Franchise, the Chennai-based team will not be keen on retaining the services of Rahane.
2. Shardul Thakur
Shardul Thakur, often known as Lord Thakur, had his best phase as a bowler between IPL 2018-2021, where he played a crucial role for the franchise with the ball and picked up wickets at crucial junctures which allowed the team to lift the IPL trophy twice in IPL 2018 and 2021.
However, due to the limited number of retentions permitted to each franchise, Chennai had to take the tough decision of releasing Thakur and he plied his trade for Delhi Capitals (DC) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for one-one season each but he wasn’t able to create any kind of impact and as a result, he was released ahead of IPL 2024.
In the IPL 2024-mini auction, CSK snapped up Thakur for 4 crore Indian rupees and many people thought that the all-rounder would return to his best after returning to the franchise where he had his best IPL seasons but much to the dismay of the fans, he failed to perform well, picking up just five wickets in at a really high economy rate of 9.75.
1 . Deepak Chahar
Chennai’s Premier bowler, Deepak Chahar, has played a crucial role for the franchise since joining them in 2018, helping them get crucial breakthroughs with his astonishing swinging-deliveries. But, last season was one where he failed to perform according to expectations.
In eight matches, the speedster managed to pick up just five matches at an astonishingly high-average of 40, which if you take into account the standards he has set for himself, is certainly not a Deepak-Chahar like thing.
His persistent injury issues have not been kind to him either and missing important matches for the CSK is something the franchise is not going to be pleased with.
The Chennai based team, are undergoing a transitional phase after MSD stepped down from his leadership duties last year and Ruturaj Gaikwad became the new captain.
Plus, the limited number of retentions will not work in the favour of Deepak as well as CSK will be keen on prioritising the likes of Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja and Matheesha Pathirana over the elder Chahar. As a result, the chances of Deepak Chahar getting retained by the Ruturaj-Gaikwad led team are looking pretty bleak.
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