Ravindra Jadeja has been ruled out of the remainder of the ongoing IPL season with a rib injury, Chennai Super Kings confirmed on Wednesday evening. Although there was no compulsion from the Indian team management to release the player because of the injury, it is understood that the franchise decided to release Jadeja after consultation with the player.
Jadeja suffered an injury while fielding in their game against Royal Challengers Bangalore on May 4 and subsequently missed the match against Delhi Capitals. Although the nature of the injury isn’t serious, CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan confirmed that the all-rounder is still experiencing some discomfort while batting and bowling and the franchise decided to release the player keeping the hectic calendar ahead of him.
This brings to an end of what has been a forgetful season for Jadeja. Having replaced MS Dhoni as captain just two days before their first match against Kolkata Knight Riders, the tournament hasn’t gone well for the India all-rounder. With no previous experience in captaincy, Jadeja struggled to get going as he tallied only 116 runs in 10 innings and picked up only five wickets with the ball. After leading the team in eight matches and with the side languishing at the ninth spot in the table, Chennai Super Kings replaced Jadeja as captain with Dhoni.
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The franchise said in a statement that the decision to remove him from captaincy was taken to allow Jadeja focus more on his game. But that the franchise went back to Dhoni also showed they don’t have other captaincy options. While Dhoni was preparing Jadeja for captaincy since the end of the last season, the move didn’t work was there for everyone to see. More importantly, the team doesn’t have any other option as of now, which is why they went back to Dhoni.
And multiple sources have also revealed that Jadeja wasn’t happy in the manner in which he was removed from the captaincy as the all-rounder is believed to have shown interest to continue in his role. With the injury bringing an early end to the season, there are concerns whether the all-rounder will continue with Chennai next season, especially after he was removed from captaincy. However, the franchise maintained the player very much remains part of their plans and there haven’t been any sort of discussions over it.
With regards to the captaincy next season, Chennai are set to have a discussion at the end of the season. While one option is to groom Ruturaj Gaikwad, the other is to pick someone from the auction pool. In case there is no auction pool, CSK will have to get into negotiation with other teams over any potential transfers, which at this stage looks improbable as no team would like to forego their key player to a rival team.