The Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) are making a comeback into the Indian Premier League (IPL) manifold after a two-year hiatus as the two franchises were suspended for their involvement in corruption in 2013.
As a result, Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) and Gujarat Lions (GL), who replaced the two teams for the last two editions, are no longer part of the league.
This has brought an interesting scenario into the equation. As per the proposal, which has been floated by the IPL Governing Council on Tuesday (October 24), CSK and RR can retain players from the two teams (RPS and Gujarat).
"We are going to propose minimum 3 retentions -1 Indian and 2 foreigners. The players, who played for Pune and Gujarat in last two years can be retained by Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals. We will place it in front of owners during workshop next month," news agency "Press Trust of India" quoted an IPL Governing Council member as saying.
However, that is only the proposal by the GC, which has to be agreed upon by other participating franchises. If agreed, former India captain and darling of CSK, MS Dhoni will surely be retained by the franchise.
So, all eyes will be on the next month's workshop, which could play an important role about Dhoni's CSK future in IPL 2018. If other franchises do not agree upon the proposal, it will be really interesting. Will Dhoni find his name in the main auction? There is no clarity about it.
Besides Dhoni, there are a number of players, which CSK and RR would like to retain. If CSK go for Dhoni (1 Indian), Dwayne Bravo and Faf du Plessis (2 foreigners), and RR decide to retain Ajinkya Rahane (1 Indian), Steve Smith and James Faulkner (2 foreigners), it will be interesting.
All these players have proved themselves in the IPL. CSK and RR should consider themselves lucky if they can retain their services.
Here are the squads of RPS and GL, from which CSK and RR can pick
GL: Suresh Raina (c), Ravindra Jadeja, James Faulkner, Brendon McCullum, Aaron Finch, Dwayne Smith, Dinesh Karthik, Dhawal Kulkarni, Praveen Kumar, Andrew Tye, Ishan Kishan, Pradeep Sangwan, Shivil Koushik, Shadab Bashir Jakati, Jaydev Shah, Manpreet Gony, Nathu Singh, Jason Roy, Munaf Patel, Chirag Suri, Akshdeep Nath, Basil Thampi, Shubham Agarwal, Tejas Baroka, Pratham Singh, Shelley Sanjay Kumar Shaurya, Dwayne Bravo.
RPS: Steve Smith (c), Shardul Thakur, MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane, Faf du Plessis, Ashok Dinda, Ankush Bains, Rajat Bhatia, Ankit Sharma, Ishwar Pandey, Adam Zampa, Jaskaran Singh, Baba Aparajith, Deepak Chahar, Usman Khawaja, Mayank Agarwal, Ben Stokes, Manoj Tiwary, Jaydev Unadkat, Rahul Chahar, Daniel Christian, Lockie Ferguson, Saurabh Kumar, Milind Tandon, Rahul Tripathi, Imran Tahir.
