Chennai Super Kings entered the Indian Premier League players’ auction Thursday to fill 6 spots including an overseas slot. They went in with an available salary cap of ₹19.90 crore and created a huge buzz with the players they bought.
CSK picked all-rounder Krishnappa Gowtham for a huge sum of ₹9.25 crore, making him the most expensive uncapped buy in IPL history. The MS Dhoni-led team also abought Indian Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara at his base price of ₹50 lakh. Pujara was certainly considered following his heroics in Australia as he is going to return in the cash-rich tournament after six seasons.
The Super Kings were involved in an intense bidding war with other franchises – Royal Challengers Bangalore, Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals to get the hold of Australian all-rounder Glenn Maxwell. But RCB won the race and CSK filled the only overseas sloth by having Moeen Ali on board.
The other three picks were M Harishankar Reddy, K Bhagath Varma and C. Hari Nishaanth; all the three are uncapped players and were bought at their base prices.
Here is how CSK squad looks like after the auction:
Chennai Super Kings:
Squad: Faf du Plessis, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, N. Jagadeesan (wk), Robin Uthappa, MS Dhoni (c&wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Sam Curran, Dwayne Bravo, Karn Sharma, R. Sai Kishore, Mitchell Santner, Imran Tahir, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, Lungi Ngidi, Josh Hazlewood, KM Asif
Players Bought: Moeen Ali (INR 7 Cr), K Gowtham (INR 9.25 Cr), Cheteshwar Pujara (INR 50 L), M Harisankar Reddy (INR 20 L), K. Bhagath Varma (INR 20 L), C Hari Nishanth (INR 20 L)
Purse Remaining: INR 2.55 cr
Slots to fill: 0