Ahead of the big retention day for the next edition of the IPL this year, the Chennai Super Kings franchise has let go off-spinner Harbhajan Singh. He was bought in the mega auction before the 2018 edition of the league for his base price of Rs 2 crore, but he opted out of the last edition played in the UAE citing personal reasons amid the rage of Coronavirus pandemic. Harbhajan took to his Twitter account to announce his separation from the franchise, and thanked support staff and team management for ‘wonderful 2 years’ with the side where he made ‘some great friends.’
The men in yellow need to restructure their team and hence there many more releases on cards before they announce the list of players they have retained.. Notably, they have the least amount of money left in their purse—Rs15 lakh to make their squad and hence letting go players who might not play a big role for them over the next three-four seasons make sense.
In all likelihood, players such as Piyush Chawla, Imran Tahir, Murali Vijay, and Dwayne Bravo may be shown the exit door as the franchise must be contemplating the idea of building a team from a base.
Piyush Chawal was bought in the IPL 2018 auction for a hefty amount of Rs 6.75 crore in the auction before IPL 2020 but the leg spinner failed to leave his mark on the team’s fortunes and ended up making it into the playing XI in only seven matches. He could manage to pick up only nine wickets with a high economy rate of 9.09 runs per over.
On the other hand, it will be a second departure for Vijay who had made his comeback in the franchise in the 2019 edition but he was horribly out of form in the three matches last season and may well be shown the exit door from the side.
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