CHENNAI: The Chennai Super Kings think tank was a happy lot as they bought back their star batter Devon Conway Rs 6.25 crore at the IPL 2025 mega auction held at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Sunday. After seven unsuccessful bids for various players, in particular bowlers, CSK managed to pick Conway as their first player at the auction.
With the return of Conway, CSK opening problem has been solved as the Kiwi will once again partner captain Ruturaj Gaikwad at the top. Apart from Conway, CSK signed Rahul Tripathi for Rs 3.4 crore after a tussle with Kolkata Knight Riders. Meanwhile, what was pleasing for the CSK management was the return of Rachin Ravindra through RTM after Punjab Kings sealed him for Rs 4 crore.
With CSK having retained the likes of Shivam Dube, MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja, their batting has a lot of class and experience in them. Former National selector and India player Venkatapathy Raju said that the depth will help CSK flourish. "The return of Rachin Ravindra and Convey augurs well for CSK. With Rahul Tripathi's addition and with the likes of Ruturaj, Conway, MSD and Jadeja CSK has a solid batting line-up," he said.
CSK's spin bowling department, too, got strengthened by the return of ace spinner R Ashwin. After bids from Lucknow Super Giants, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and Rajasthan Royals, CSK got hold of the Chennai-based cricketer for Rs 9.75 crores. One expected CSK to go all out for Ashwin as he is playing a major role in their High Performance centre.
With Ashwin coming back to the franchise after ten years and CSK signing Noor Ahmad for Rs 10 crore, they have three world class spinners to play at their home venue, MA Chidambaram Stadium. "It was a bit of a homecoming for Ashwin but he's a world class bowler.
As Venky (Mysore) talked about, it's not so much the price, you look at how someone fits in and there's an emotional attachment of Ashwin with Chennai, so it is a nice fit. He has still got a very good skill set but the bowler's numbers are fantastic, he's obviously towards the latter part of his career but the experience that he brings is handy with the bat and we think we can use him in a number of ways," head coach Stephen Fleming said at a press conference.
"(The choice of) Noor Ahmed was looking more at the middle to attack, so if we do get turning conditions, then we've got an opportunity to keep taking wickets. We've got (Matheesha) Pathirana at the end which is the death aspect and we've just identified that the way the game's going, your bowling has to be really specific and you have to take wickets to slow teams down. We've tried to be smart with our options given our retained players and add some variation which maybe we lacked a little bit last year," he added.
Chennai went up to Rs 12.5 crore to sign KL Rahul, but Delhi Capitals sealed the deal at Rs 14 crore. Their attempts to bid for Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj for under and about Rs 8 crore went fruitless as other teams with deep pockets outbid the Chennai-based team. Later in the evening, Khaleel Ahmed was signed by CSK for Rs 4.80 crore as Delhi did not use the RTM.