India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin gave a rather unorthodox take on the retention policy for Chennai Super Kings ahead of the IPL 2025 mega auction. Here, he proposed that Chennai Super Kings retain the multi-time champion skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni as one of their five main retentions as a capped player instead of an uncapped player. He chose one different uncapped player as one of the main retentions instead of Dhoni while discussing player retentions on his YouTube channel.
“If you say Mumbai Indians can retain six players, why cannot CSK? We have Ruturaj (Gaikwad), Jadeja (Ravindra Jadeja), (Matheesha) Pathirana, (Shivam) Dube, MS Dhoni and Sameer Rizvi,” Ashwin stated.
“Just being a devil’s advocate,” he added playfully.
Former South African performance analyst Prasanna Raman, going under the sobriquet ‘PDogg’, didn’t agree with Ashwin. “I don’t think you should retain Sameer Rizvi for Rs 4 cr. I don’t even know whether he would agree to play for Rs 4 cr,” said Raman.
Rizvi was purchased for a handsome Rs 8.4 crore ahead of the IPL 2024 and could not really do much; he could manage just 51 runs in eight games with a strike rate of 118. Still, Ashwin seemed optimistic about Rizvi too, praising his aggressive show in the UP T20 League and hinting there are plenty of such cricketers around, which should not let his price go sky-high.
“He has been showing a show every day. He’s playing on a different level, single-handedly in the UP T20. There is a huge upside with him. He will fall into the same bracket as Shahrukh Khan, Abhinav Manohar and Dhruv Jurel”, Ashwin asserted.
IPL Governing Council’s decision to reinstate a rule that states that Indian players who haven’t played internationally for five or more years can be retained as ‘uncapped’ can work to CSK’s benefit in retaining five-time IPL-winning captain Dhoni for just Rs 4 crore. Ideas by Ashwin may help bolster CSK’s Indian core. Ashwin has played for CSK between 2008 and 2015 when he won two IPL titles during his time.