Chennai Super Kings CEO Kasi Viswanathan is confident that their captain MS Dhoni will fulfill his promise and play the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 season as well after the 5-time champions retained him on the retention deadline on Sunday, November 26. Kasi Viswanathan opined on concerns over MS Dhoni’s fitness, saying that Dhoni has recovered well from knee surgery and will be available to play the next season of IPL 2024.
“If our leader has given a word, he has never gone back. He already told what he was planning to do in that intervieew. I am sure that knowing MS, he will always do what he has committed to do. He is quite fit. Thalaivan is thalaivan (our leader is our leader),” Kasi Viswanathan said in a video shared by CSK.
However, MS Dhoni had a successful left knee surgery at Mumbai’s Kokilaben Hospital on June 1st, 2023. The procedure, which is known as arthroscopic or keyhole surgery, was performed by Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala, a renowned sports orthopaedic surgeon as well. Despite having played the entire IPL 2023 season with heavy strapping on his knee, Dhoni led CSK to their fifth title and post-surgery, he was discharged promptly and returned to Ranchi for rest and rehabilitation as well.
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On the other hand, Kasi Viswanathan also said Chennai Super Kings were thinking of retaining Ben Stokes before he made himself unavailable for the next season. He also added that the team tried to look for replacements for Ambati Rayudu in the trading windows he retired from the IPL following CSK’s title-winning campaign in 2023.
“We have done only one trade in the last 15 years. That is for Robin Uthappa. We did look out for some players as a replacement for Ambati Rayudu, but we could not get it. A slot has to be filled. We will look to fill up that slot with some youngster if we are not able to get an experienced player,” said Kasi Vishwanathan. “With regards to Hardik, we finally found out that he returned to Mumbai Indians. There have been some interesting players released. This will be a good auction because I heard that some of the Australian players like Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Travis Head are all coming back to the IPL. So it will be an interesting auction.”
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Chennai Super Kings Released players: Ben Stokes, Dwaine Pretorius, Bhagath Varma, Subhranshu Senapati, Ambati Rayudu (Retired), Akash Singh, Kyle Jamieson and Sisanda Magala.
Retained Players: Ruturaj Gaikwad, Devon Conway, Moeen Ali, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, MS Dhoni (C & WK), Ajinkya Rahane, Deepak Chahar, Maheesh Theekshana, Mukesh Choudhary, Mitchell Santner, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Simarjeet Singh, Matheesha Pathirana, Tushar Deshpande, Prashant Solanki, Shaik Rasheed, Nishant Sindhu, Ajay Mandal.
